Airport Safety

* I operate a biplane sightseeing business and have flown out of Whiteman Airport for many years. Reporter Martha Willman talked to me on the phone about safety at Whiteman for 30 minutes but she apparently didn’t hear a word I said. Maybe she didn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good “story.”

Since I read her lengthy article raising numerous scary but bogus safety issues, I have done my own research on the National Transportation Safety Board Web site, looking for some evidence to support her article. The official preliminary or final NTSB report on the accidents she cites during the three-year period attributes each one to pilot error or mechanical malfunction or both, not the airport. For example, a Mooney took off from another airport with an oil leak. Fifteen minutes later, the pilot made a forced landing in the Tujunga Wash. The Times article concluded by implication that the airport was somehow to blame.

None of the NTSB reports cited the Crosswinds Cafe, the airport restaurant that went out of business months ago. Yet the Times reporter devoted much space to the cafe. What does it have to do with safety? Are we to conclude that pilots stop at the cafe’s bar on the way to fly their airplanes? That would not only violate strict Federal Aviation Administration regulations, it would be an act of suicide.

Veteran pilots and accident investigators will tell you that most of the time, people kill airplanes, airplanes don’t kill people. And seldom is the airport even a factor. None of the official NTSB reports on accidents cited in The Times mentions Whiteman Airport as a cause. As I told your reporter, the most dangerous part of my day is the drive to the airport on the Hollywood Freeway. Now that is scary!

JOHN MARSHALL

Studio City