Civilian Plane Lands on Simi Valley Freeway : Aviation: A string of such incidents has been attributed to congested skies and the use of highways as landmarks.

The Simi Valley Freeway became an emergency landing strip early Friday when a pilot eased his single-engine plane onto the median strip in west Simi Valley.

The forced landing was the latest in a series of such incidents in Ventura County that aviation experts said reflects congestion in county skies and the tendency of pilots to use highways as visual landmarks.

Kirk Wilder, 45, of Chatsworth landed his vintage Aircoupe safely after the plane’s carburetor apparently stuck, flooding the engine, said Fred O’Donnell of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Neither Wilder nor his passenger, Steven Lasargo, 48, of San Gabriel, were injured. They were bound for the Santa Paula Airport from Whiteman Airpark in Pacoima when the 1946 plane developed the engine problem just after 7 a.m., O’Donnell said.

The incident occurred just two days after a pilot safely landed his single-engine Cessna 172 in a cornfield near Moorpark when the plane’s engine threw a rod.

In that incident, the pilot and his passenger also walked away unhurt.

As recently as last October, the Simi Valley Freeway was the site of an emergency landing by a student pilot whose small plane lost its gas cap and ran out of fuel over the Santa Susana Pass. Mark Hines of Santa Clarita put his Skyhawk Cessna 172 down on the freeway, putting an unexpected end to his flight from Paso Robles to Van Nuys Airport.

O’Donnell said the Simi Valley Freeway is often used as a landmark by general-aviation pilots following visual flight rules.

“If you look at the terrain there, the freeway is one of the few places to put a plane down because of the rocks and the area’s steepness,” O’Donnell said.

He added that the Simi Valley Freeway follows a heavily traveled air corridor for flights from the Van Nuys or Burbank airports toward Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Santa Paula.

Then again, he said, pilots frequently maintain flight paths that pass between radio beacons located near Fillmore and Camarillo. The beacons, known as visual omni-ranging devices, look like a white dot from the air, “and like an upside-down ice-cream cone” from the ground.

The beacons transmit a radio signal that helps pilots navigate, he said.

But most private pilots, especially those who fly single-engine planes, usually follow major roads if visibility is sufficient.

“Frankly, I’d avoid underdeveloped areas with no place to put a plane down,” said O’Donnell, who is a pilot.

With more light aircraft in the Los Angeles area than anywhere else in the world, incidents like Friday’s are inevitable, O’Donnell said.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Nagel, who responded to the freeway landing, said the route Wilder followed allows a pilot to skirt airspace controlled by Los Angeles International Airport and the Point Mugu Naval Air Station.

A veteran pilot, Nagel said that local skies are almost always congested, especially on weekends. “There’s so much traffic, you just can’t see all of it,” he said.

Despite the less-than-friendly skies, general-aviation accidents in the region have not increased sharply in recent years, said Scott Erickson, an air-safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. An accident is defined as an event that causes significant damage to aircraft or injury to passengers.

Flight accidents in the region that includes California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii increased from 334 in fiscal year 1988 to 414 in the last fiscal year. But with barely more than a month left, only 348 accidents have been recorded in the current fiscal year. Erickson said the five-year pattern showed “pretty even numbers.”

Erickson said two-thirds of accidents are still attributed to pilot error, but the severity of the consequences often depends on whether it occurs over a freeway, for instance, or over mountains.

“If a pilot has an engine failure over an airport, he lands and there’s no accident,” Erickson said. “If the same thing happens over the mountains, he crashes and we have an accident.”