Airfield Not to Blame in Crash, Officials Say

Tragedy struck again as Santa Paula Airport celebrated its 65th anniversary, but airport authorities pointed out that Saturday’s fatal plane crash had nothing to do with the tiny airfield’s troubled safety record.

Stunt pilot Richard (Rick) Fessenden, 47, crashed his Berkut fiberglass plane doing aerobatic maneuvers during an air show for the airport, which lacks a control tower and is hemmed in by houses, a freeway and mountains.

“The airport didn’t have anything to do with it. Geography has nothing to do with it,” said Bob Phelps, a coordinator of Saturday’s show and chairman of the airport’s safety committee. “The crash could be in the middle of Kansas or anywhere else.”

Airport officials and Santa Paula’s regular pilots fear that Saturday’s fatality--the 24th crash and 11th life lost in a decade--will further sully the public reputation of the privately owned airport perched at the southern edge of Santa Paula.

“The airport itself does get a bad rap,” said Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Mark Hanson, who has been flying for 30 years. “I personally don’t think there is anything unsafe about it.”

Saturday’s crash says more about the risks that are taken at air shows than about the airport, authorities said. Although Fessenden was a distinguished and experienced pilot, he lost his life doing tricky maneuvers designed to thrill air show crowds.

“Usually, we don’t have accidents” at air shows, said Phelps, who spent 49 years with the Federal Aviation Administration. “But with low-level aerobatics, there is always a certain amount of calculated risk.”

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Hanson and other seasoned fliers acknowledge that Santa Paula places more demands on pilots than many airports. Its runway, for instance, is only 2,600 feet long. And, there’s no tower to spot trouble before it turns deadly.

“Some people may be used to landing on a 10,000-foot runway and are used to being told what to do by a control tower,” Hanson said. “They may not develop the skills needed for a short field. Those people may have problems learning to fly here.”

The airport has had more than its share of problems over the past decade. From 1984 to 1994, Santa Paula reported more crashes than any other airport in California with a comparable number of flights, according to a Times survey of 135 airports.

The airport is also more accident-prone than any other airport in Ventura County. Camarillo Airport, which has nearly four times as many flights a year, had the same number of crashes as Santa Paula and three fewer fatalities during the same decade. And Oxnard Airport, with twice as many flights as Santa Paula, reported just four crashes and one death.

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The most common cause of crashes at Santa Paula is pilot error, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Safety officials describe pilot error as poor judgment, poor airplane handling, inadequate supervision and overconfidence in personal ability.

As a result of human error, planes have crashed into houses near the airport, into other planes, telephone wires, and the surrounding mountains.

Over the years, some Santa Paula residents have called for a control tower, hoping it could halt, or at least reduce the number of crashes.

Only 400 of the nation’s 17,000 airports have control towers.

And federal officials believe that the small amount of air traffic and the mix of aircraft do not warrant the expense of installing and operating a tower.

Without a control tower, pilots must follow visual flight rules.

That means they have to rely on their line of vision to stay out of harm’s way.

Many planes are equipped with radios, and pilots use a common frequency band to alert each other of their locations.

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Longtime pilots blame the airport’s high crash rate on inexperienced fliers, particularly those unfamiliar with the mountains that flank the airport at the bottom of the Santa Clara River Valley.

The answer, they say, is better education about safe flying.

Concerns about the high crash rate has prompted the city of Santa Paula to start buying homes built too close to the runway.

Although money is tight, city leaders want to relocate those residents who live in danger’s path.

The program was conceived after a 1992 midair crash sent a plane barreling through two houses at the east end of the runway.

The pilot was killed in the crash, which burned the two houses.

Miraculously, a family watching television when the plane dropped through their roof were not injured.

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Recent Fatal Crashes at Santa Paula Airport

* Aug. 12, 1995: Richard (Rick) Fessenden, 47, of Camarillo, a former Navy test pilot who was the first to fly an F-18 Hornet through Top Gun naval fighter plane training, crashed his Berkut plane during an aerobatic stunt at the Santa Paula Air Show.

* July 3, 1994: John Forrest Lires, 44, and Erin Lires, 10, of Ojai; their Cessna 195 had engine trouble and plummeted to the ground.

* June 21, 1994: Frank Ernest Perry Jr., 72, of Camarillo; his homemade ultra-light plane stalled and plunged into the Santa Clara River.

* Dec. 31, 1993: Michael Dirkers, 26, of North Carolina; his two-seat Grumman lost power and fell into the Santa Clara River, drowning the pilot.

* Aug. 27, 1992: William Lewis Clark, 49, of Buttonwillow; his single-engine Cessna collided in midair with another Cessna, then barreled through two houses near the runway.

* April 3, 1991: Thomas Grist Sr., 51, of Las Vegas and David Knight, 45, of Stockton; the engine died in their home-built plane, causing the plane to fall, crash into a golf cart and explode in flames.

* Feb. 13, 1991: Lee Manelski, 45, of Santa Paula and David Tomlinson, 18, of Thousand Oaks; their Pitts Aerobatic collided in midair with a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter.