Call to Hire Radio Monitor Doesn’t Fly at Private Airport

Pilots describe the small Santa Paula Airport as safe, inexpensive and neighborly. And they like it just the way it is.

Reflecting pride in their hometown airport, pilots Friday criticized a proposal by a federal aviation official that the private airport adopt a new procedure to improve radio communication and minimize accidents.

Crash investigator George Petterson of the National Transportation Safety Board has suggested that the airport consider hiring someone to monitor radio traffic and broadcast advisory bulletins.

Petterson made the comment in light of a fiery crash last August that claimed the life of a Central Valley crop-duster pilot and focused attention on recent accidents at the last private airport in Ventura County.

The midair collision that killed Buttonwillow pilot William Lewis Clark was the third fatal air crash in less than two years at the Santa Paula Airport. The deaths in these recent collisions are the first fatalities at the airport in nearly 30 years.

According to Petterson’s preliminary analysis, Clark was flying an improper approach over the city before he turned into the flight path of a plane flown by student pilot Betty Polak of Camarillo.

Also Clark may not have been listening to the correct radio frequency pilots often use to broadcast their movements at Santa Paula Airport. The airport’s old radio frequency had been changed several weeks before the accident, Petterson said.

Just 18 months before, a helicopter carrying film actor Kirk Douglas strayed over the runway on takeoff and crashed into a small plane, killing two people and injuring three.

That accident, which killed aerobatic instructor Lee Manelski, 46, and student pilot David S. Tomlinson, 18, received widespread publicity because of injuries to Douglas and cartoon voice actor Noel Blanc, who piloted the helicopter.

Two months later, veteran Hawaiian Airlines pilot Thomas Grist Sr., 51, of Las Vegas and passenger David Knight, 45, of Stockton were killed when their hand-built plane lost power on takeoff and crashed.

Longtime pilots and members of the airport’s safety board blame pilots from outside the area for causing two of the crashes. They dismiss the crash caused by a loss of power at takeoff as an unavoidable accident.

“Two people made a mistake and their mistake cost people’s lives,” said Bruce Dickenson, whose grandfather was one of two ranchers who spearheaded the construction of the airport in 1930.

The airport’s string of fatal accidents prompted Petterson to suggest the airport association improve communication among pilots.

Petterson, who is investigating the most recent accident, said the airport could improve safety by hiring someone to monitor radio traffic and broadcast advice to incoming pilots.

“My own personal opinion is the airport could improve safety a lot by designating someone as the official . . . advisory service,” Petterson said, adding that small airports without control towers are not required to adopt such systems.

“For the sake of the airport’s survival, I think it would be wise for someone to bite the bullet and pay the cost of a radio monitor’s salary,” said Petterson.

Because it is an advisory service, a monitor would not increase the airport’s liability in case of an accident, Petterson said.

Petterson’s opinion has received little support from the airport’s pilots, who tend to blame the accidents on so-called transients, flying jargon for pilots from outside the area.

“That’s the bureaucratic approach--to spend some money to solve a problem,” said Bob Van Ausdell, a retired commercial pilot who flies a vintage biplane and is a member of the airport’s safety board.

“We do not have an unsafe airport, because practically every accident we have had was from a transient coming into the area,” Van Ausdell said. “We wouldn’t have a problem if people would just do what they’re supposed to do.”

Jim Sharp, president of the Santa Paula Airport Assn., said he doubted whether the addition of a ground monitor would be either financially feasible or improve airport safety. The association has not calculated the cost of adding a ground-based radio station.

“The whole deal of the airport is predicated on letting the average man have access to flying,” Sharp said. “A control tower is expensive to build, maintain and staff. Monitoring radio traffic is fine, but if you’re sitting at a desk without a view, if you can’t see anything, what good does that do?”

To keep the airport affordable to the 200 pilots who have planes there, the airport association has maintained the same $10 monthly ground rent for hangars that was charged in 1930, he said. The association, which has no membership dues, charges a $3 nightly fee for transient fliers, with the first night free. And the fee for outdoor airplane storage is still just $15 a month, he said.

Hangar costs at the Camarillo and Oxnard airports can be as much as 10 times as high, pilots say.

Last year, the association brought in $163,000 in revenues and spent $120,500, including about $30,000 for debt service, nearly $17,000 for two part-time employees and $15,000 for repairs and maintenance, association records show. To keep costs low, airport Manager Jack Felker frequently uses his pickup truck as a steamroller when he patches potholes.

At the end of the year, the association had cleared $42,000, but Sharp said the airport loses money as often as it makes a profit. “We operate pretty close to being a nonprofit corporation,” Sharp said.

Having someone on the ground to monitor radio traffic could have some benefit, several airport users conceded.

Kenneth (K.D.) Johnson, who recently acquired one of the airport’s low-rent hangars after 16 years on the waiting list, said a radio monitor might be helpful.

“It might help some people follow the right flight pattern,” Johnson said. “Most people are interested in safety, and would pay more attention if they knew someone was looking over their shoulder.”

But Johnson made it clear he was not a proponent of such a system, referring to a fatal collision on the ground at Los Angeles International Airport despite the presence of a control tower and air traffic controllers.

Doug Dullenkopf, whose company, Screaming Eagle, sells and leases planes, said a monitoring system could provide some of the oversight of a control tower.

“Obviously, some of the pilots are not using the self-announcing procedures” that now serve as the airport’s only safety procedure, Dullenkopf said.

“The locals are doing just fine,” he said. “When transients come in who are used to a control tower, they may need assistance. I get people walking in asking why didn’t anybody answer when I called the airport.”

While rejecting the need for a radio monitor, Van Ausdell said the only alternative to continued accidents by transient pilots might be to close the airport altogether to outsiders.

“We could put a big X on the runway and tell everybody this is a private airport and don’t come in--but we don’t want to do that,” Van Ausdell said.