Couples Flying United Spark Cries of ‘Not in My Airspace’

The twin-engine Aero Commander is in the shop at Van Nuys Airport, awaiting its annual safety inspection. Nick Edgar, owner of Mile High Adventures, says the timing is unfortunate, given the surge of interest in his little charter service lately.

To understand Edgar’s situation, two modern aphorisms come to mind.

The first is: Sex sells.

The second is: There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Gerald Silver, meanwhile, brings to mind an older saying: Be careful what you wish for.

Silver, the president of Homeowners of Encino, must have been pleased when he picked up the Daily News on Christmas Eve and saw this headline: “Air romance raises residents’ ire.” It was shouted across five columns as the lead story on the top of Page 1.

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The first paragraph must have raised a few eyebrows: A company that offers private flights out of Van Nuys Airport so that passengers can engage in airborne sex has angered homeowners who have long battled the airport over noise.

(“Hey!” a homeowner might shout at the tiny airplane overhead. “Could you two keep it down up there?”)

Read further and the ambiguity disappears. Fed up and frustrated in their efforts to curtail increasing jet and helicopter traffic, activists have now focused on a small businessman with a twin-propeller Aero Commander that, all things considered, isn’t a big part of the noise problem. But Mile High Adventures gives the activists a new angle of attack.

Silver must have been pleased to see himself quoted so prominently:

“This is the last straw--people fornicating in the skies over our city . . . It’s sleazy. What people do in their own bedroom is their business. What they do over our heads is the community’s business.”

You may wish to read that a second time. The quote is a doozy, one of best of 1996.

It’s not every day you see that F-word. And here, I suspect, is where Silver made a rhetorical blunder. The holier-than-thou tone, the leap to judgment, surely inspires smirks, not concern.

Fornicating, of course, doesn’t just refer to sexual intercourse, but sex outside the auspices of matrimony. The word conjures up religious fundamentalists who are convinced that fornication is a sin.

Because he cast the first stone, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Gerald Silver is without sin. When I spoke to him I meant to ask Silver whether he believed that fornicators would burn in hell for all eternity unless they begged for God’s mercy, wept like Jimmy Swaggart and changed their wicked ways. But I forgot.

Besides, Silver also expressed that common modern view that what two people--consenting adults, presumably--do in their own bedroom is their business.

We wound up talking in circles. Silver allowed that some of Mile High’s customers might not be fornicators at all, but loving couples who had the marriage license that made such behavior moral. Silver expressed confidence, however, that many others must be fornicators, and not just garden-variety fornicators, but “kinky” fornicators. But then he said that other activists were more outraged by the alleged immorality of this air charter.

Perhaps we can at least agree that Silver’s right in arguing that what people “do over our heads is the community’s business.”

We’ve all heard of NIMBY, haven’t we? This might be considered NIMAS, for Not In My Air Space. Or perhaps NOMHYD, for Not Over My Head You Don’t.

This may be a matter for the Federal Aviation Administration, but the feds don’t seem to care about airborne sex unless it affects flight safety. So, Silver asks, what if sex-charter pilots become distracted?

A reporter who is covering the Van Nuys Airport debate pondered the sort of regulations that Silver might have in mind.

“Well,” Dade Hayes said, “I’ve heard of No-Fly Zones. . . .”

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Don’t think I’m unsympathetic to those who endure airport noise. Twelve years ago, I owned a home near an airport, directly under a flight path. And not just any airport, but San Diego’s dreaded Lindbergh Field, rated by airline pilots as one of the nation’s most dangerous. Some nights they were so loud and so low I would wake up fearing that one would land on my head.

But activists need to pick their shots. Jets and helicopters and hours of operation are the relevant issues. Fornication isn’t.

This Gerald Silver Production, which rippled through radio and TV, will actually create more noise out of Van Nuys. Edgar, owner of Mile High Adventures, says when he saw the first story he was worried. But now it’s clear that moral objections won’t stop what he likens to a “limousine in the sky,” and more than a dozen people have sought reservations in recent days.

Edgar used to fly out of Santa Monica Airport before moving to Van Nuys a few months ago. More than 90% of the reservations, he says, are made by women willing to pay $429 an hour to surprise their husband or boyfriend on a special occasion. Edgar tells callers that champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries and the view of Los Angeles at night all make for a romantic evening they’ll never forget.

I happen to know about one Studio City couple who went aloft with Mile High Adventures not just for fun, but with hopes of conceiving.

If it’s a girl, the wife said later, “We’ll name her Ariel.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.