Van Nuys’ Overloaded Airport

Pilot Reiner Bey and his wife were killed Tuesday morning when their single-engine airplane plunged into a Reseda house less than a mile from Van Nuys Airport, where they had taken off only moments before. It will take time to determine the cause of the crash of the high-performance Mooney M-20R Ovation, but a few things are already worth some attention.

First, the pilot should not have taken off under the existing weather conditions. Bey did not have an instrument rating, meaning he was not qualified to fly when he had to rely on instruments and not sight. There was heavy fog Tuesday morning, and skies were overcast down to 900 feet. A ceiling of at least 1,000 feet is required for pilots to take off without using flight instruments.

Bey also took off well before the start of daily operations at the Van Nuys Airport control tower, which functions from 6:15 a.m. to 11 p.m.

The crash comes in a period when general aviation is enjoying its best overall safety since 1945. Part of the Federal Aviation Admini- stration’s new “Safer Skies” initiative is to offer general aviation pilots up-to-the-minute digital weather displays in their cockpits.

Ultimately, it’s still up to pilots to make the right decisions. But in Van Nuys it’s also time to push for longer hours for the control tower. Until the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike, the tower was open 24 hours a day, says Van Nuys Airport manager Ron Kochevar. In 1994, Kochevar asked the Federal Aviation Administration to start tower operations earlier because of increased traffic. “This unfortunate incident presents the opportunity to address the issue again,” Kochevar said this week.

Van Nuys, with 537,000 flight operations each year, is the nation’s busiest general aviation airport. That compares with 463,000 operations at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, a general and commercial aviation airport. Van Nuys is also in the Los Angeles Basin, which was once referred to by an FAA official as “‘arguably the busiest, most complex airspace in the country.”

Finally, the FAA should consider mandatory suspension of pilots’ licenses for flying in poor conditions without an instrument rating, regardless of the pilot’s flight record. That might help convince pilots to stay on the ground when they shouldn’t fly.