Van Nuys Air Safety Concerns Renewed

The first fatal plane crash at Van Nuys Airport in a decade raised safety questions Friday about the world’s busiest general aviation airport.

A Los Angeles city councilman said he would like to see an investigation into the incident early Thursday in which a pilot crash-landed in heavy fog and his body and the wreckage went undiscovered for more than four hours.

Airport officials and homeowners also renewed demands for round-the-clock air traffic control at the sprawling field.

An autopsy was continuing Friday on the body of the pilot, Robert A. Olson, 32, of Medford, Ore., whose plane was spotted by an airport police officer approaching for a landing at 1:20 a.m. Thursday. The wreckage was found 525 feet to the east side of the runway at 5:38 a.m. after the heavy fog began to lift.

Olson had flown from Las Vegas, originally intending to land at Burbank Airport, according to his flight plan, FAA officials said. Burbank was also socked in by fog.

Coroner’s officials said toxicological tests on Olson may take several days to complete. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident.

Los Angeles Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the community around Van Nuys Airport and has long criticized the facility for noise problems in nearby neighborhoods, is “very concerned about any accident” at the airport, said his spokesman, Paul Michael Neuman. “Safety is always paramount to him.”

“The councilman believes that any incident warrants full scrutiny and should be completely investigated,” he said.

Airport Manager Ronald Kochever said he, homeowner groups and others have long urged that the airport control tower be staffed 24 hours a day. The tower, from which FAA controllers guide air traffic in and out of the airport, is closed nightly from 10:45 p.m. to 5:45 a.m. During that time, pilots are left on their own to land and take off.

The tower had been staffed around the clock prior to the air controllers’ strike in 1981, when 11,500 federal controllers walked off the job and were fired by President Ronald Reagan. At the same time, the city adopted a noise-abatement ordinance to restrict takeoffs and landings of nosier aircraft during night hours.

FAA officials have argued since then that the nightly average of 16 takeoffs and landings during the unstaffed period is too low to warrant 24-hour service. FAA spokesman Tim Pile said that staffing the tower would be justified only by more traffic.

No weather readings were taken at Van Nuys Airport after 10 p.m. Thursday. But according to the National Weather Service, a heavy fog rolled into Burbank--seven miles east--at 10 p.m., reducing visibility from two miles to nearly zero within 30 minutes.

“It came in real, real fast,” meteorologist Joe Sirard said.

Burbank Airport had been socked in for more than an hour when Olson, described by FAA officials as a highly qualified pilot certified to navigate on instruments, took off from Las Vegas shortly before midnight Wednesday. He was bound for Burbank but landed at Van Nuys.

By 11:30 p.m., shortly before Olson took off from Las Vegas, pilot Tom Koch, who was preparing to leave Van Nuys, had to change his plans for the flight because of heavy fog.

“Visibility was poor,” said Koch, who flies into and out of the airport every Wednesday for Sierra Auto Recycling of Ridgecrest. “Poor enough that I got IFR clearance,” letting the FAA know he would be flying by instruments rather than by sight, as he had originally planned.

Even considering the fog, Koch, like other pilots, was at a loss to explain how Olson’s twin-engine Cessna might have veered so far from the runway and crashed. Van Nuys Airport “is a nice place to go if you’re flying instruments” with a simple, straight approach, the 20-year veteran pilot said. “It’s much better than Burbank.”

Times staff writers Hugo Martin and Steve Berry contributed to this story.