Fullerton’s Airport: It’s More Like a Way of Life

Fullerton Municipal Airport doesn’t look like much: an asphalt landing strip, an air traffic control tower and boxy, nondescript buildings.

But people who frequent the 74-year-old field say it’s a place where dreams are born. More than that, it’s where they come true.

Here, lifelong friendships are forged over a daily cup of coffee. Aspiring airline pilots fly solo for the first time. And corporate executives can shed their suits and ties to become fighter pilots for a day, staging mock dogfights.

“There’s not another place like this in the world,” said Ira Brummel, 75, a retired developer who has been coming to the airport since the 1950s.

The airport has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a former pig farm when crop-dusters landed on the site as far back as 1913. Placentia citrus ranchers William and Robert Downing founded the airport in 1927, silencing critics who declared the parcel good only “for raising bullfrogs.”

By 1948, it was the fourth-largest airport in the state and nicknamed the “Fullerton Air Force” by the Federal Aviation Administration because of the 200 planes based there, compared with 96 at Orange County Airport, which would become John Wayne Airport. In the 1970s, the airport, then flanked by businesses and apartment complexes, held as many as 600 planes, with a months-long waiting list for hangar space.

Once there were at least 27 airfields in Orange County. Today, only three remain: Fullerton, John Wayne and the Los Alamitos Naval Air Station. In fact, general-aviation airfields--for private but not commercial aircraft--have been disappearing across the state. About 30 such airports have closed statewide since 1976, according to the California Pilots Assn.

And each time there’s a crash involving a small plane, critics’ voices rise again to call for more regulation, more security. On Jan. 5, Whittier pilot Don Dirian died when he mysteriously nose-dived into a field in Buena Park, half a mile from the Fullerton runway. On the same day, in Florida, a 15-year-old boy stole a plane and crashed into a Tampa office tower.

“We’re in the cross hairs,” said Rod Propst, manager of the city-owned and -operated airport. “There’s no question about it.”

The two incidents raised very different issues. The Florida crash, coming after the terrorist slaughter of Sept. 11, sparked a broad debate about whether private planes and pilots should get more scrutiny. In Fullerton, neighbors immediately questioned the safety of having an airport so close. Some spoke to the news media about petition drives and flight-path changes and complained about the number of planes. But Propst said nobody had called him. And so far, there are no plans at City Hall to change things.

Such criticism rises and ebbs whenever a crash makes news. In Fullerton, there have been 17 fatal crashes since 1960, killing 34 people, including one bystander, Propst said.

It all comes at a time when general aviation, though still popular, is on the decline. Fewer people are flying because of the higher cost of lessons, insurance and aircraft. Veterans by the thousands, who were military-trained or paid for lessons through government grants after World War II and the Korean War, are dying off. And in cities across the country, developers are hungrily eyeing such prime property, flat and unfettered.

At Fullerton, many aviation lovers refuse to even consider the idea that someday even their beloved field might be closed.

“The dream of flying is never going to go away,” said Bill Griggs Jr. of Aviation Facilities Inc., a flight training center at the airport.

A Busy Airport, Once Much Busier

On any given day, there is a steady stream of pilots from Fullerton, Whittier, La Mirada and other surrounding communities. Wide-eyed children sit on benches in the observation patio, clutching their 40-cent cans of Mug Root Beer.

The airport may be a little past its prime, but it still averages roughly 100,000 takeoffs and landings a year. That’s more than one-fourth the number at John Wayne, the county’s only commercial airport. But the number represents half the business Fullerton had when general aviation in the United States hit its peak in the 1970s.

Fullerton isn’t as busy as Van Nuys, considered one of the nation’s busiest general-aviation airports. But it is unique in other ways. The City Council has a deep, long-standing commitment to the airport’s success. After Sept. 11, for example, city officials voted to forgive 20 days of rent in September because FAA restrictions prevented many small planes from flying.

The airport relies on no city general fund money for its $1-million operating budget. It generates its own revenue by leasing to businesses or renting hangars and tie-downs to pilots, Propst said.

Capital improvements, including the current $2.5-million repaving and runway-widening project, are funded by the FAA. Propst said the airport is now the benchmark for security at small airports, with a 24-hour video surveillance system, gate cards and a satellite police station on the premises.

All this after acquiring the dubious distinction in 1999 of leading the country in airplane thefts. Four of 16 planes stolen nationally were taken from the Fullerton field.

“We were a victim of being naive,” Propst said, pointing to what’s left of a 4-foot-high fence that used to surround the 86-acre airport.

Yet despite external events such as terrorism and security, urbanization and increased air restrictions, Fullerton is a throwback to an earlier era in aviation. Somehow, the communal atmosphere that developed over the decades has remained intact.

It’s almost like “Cheers,” where everybody knows your name. In case they don’t, there’s a photo chart of regulars hanging in the tower entryway--although “half of ‘em are dead,” said La Palma pilot Ron Hagerman, 64, who has been drinking coffee for 30 years at Tartuffles, the airport restaurant Propst likens to a 1950s-style diner.

Locals say the food is good and cheap, and the waitresses are friendly. The first customers arrive at 7 a.m., when the restaurant opens, sometimes even a few minutes early. They take their seats at the “pilots’ table.” Then a second wave of regulars, who the first group jokes are older and not as handsome, arrive after 10 a.m.

Some are military veterans. Most are retired. They have one common bond: They love flying.

They ponder current events and household problems. On a recent day, a group whose members have known one another for at least 30 years gathered around a table littered with more than a dozen Rubik’s cube knockoffs.

It seems Ira Brummel has been trying to unload thousands of them for years--cubes in every shape and size. No one is sure what the real story is, but Brummel swears he bartered a truckload of them for a fourplex in Madera, a city north of Fresno.

He gives them away to children who come into the restaurant. Take some extras, he says, for your brothers and sisters.

More old friends arrive. Hagerman glances at the table. “You still have puzzles?” he says with an incredulous shake of his head.

Other airport regulars call these men the “airport bums.” They have nicknames such as “Ready Eddie” and “the Richest Man in Fullerton.” Fred Gayton, a retired CBS cameraman, remembers the days when the airplanes were stacked up seven deep in the approach pattern to land because traffic was so heavy.

The Breakfast Club Serves Up Lots of Ribs

Jim McGee was there when the FAA tower, the first one in Orange County, opened in 1959.

“You’ll see the same guys in that restaurant and they’re solving the ills of the world right there,” chuckled Denise Jennings, marketing director at Air Combat USA, which lets customers live out dogfight fantasies.

The regulars pester one another mercilessly and offer up a chorus of yawns at their stories, which have been repeated for years. One old-timer used to claim, “You can’t buy a minute’s worth of respect around here for a $100 bill.”

No matter. Every morning, the seats are filled.

Such loyalty and longevity is a difficult thing to explain unless you’ve visited the Fullerton Airport.

Consider Michael Blackstone, an American Airlines pilot who learned to fly at Fullerton and made his first solo flight at the airport when he was 16. Now, in between piloting commercial jets, he runs Air Combat USA. It’s gained worldwide recognition, with visitors from as far as Hong Kong who shell out $900 or $1,500 a pop to engage in simulated dogfights while zipping and diving in the skies over Fullerton and Long Beach in real military planes that can rival an F-16 in the G-forces it generates.

Sure, every once in a while Blackstone considers moving his planes and operation elsewhere. But, he said, the roots are too deep. The airport has become “a place to hang out.”

Beyond that, it’s convenient, a central location, without the traffic jams and headaches he experiences at other, busier airports that serve airlines.

“I think of the Fullerton Airport like that song ‘Hotel California,’ ” Blackstone said. “You can get out, but you never leave.”