Pilots describe the small Santa Paula Airport as safe, inexpensive and neighborly. And they like it just the way it is.
Reflecting pride in their hometown airport, pilots Friday criticized a proposal by a federal aviation official that the private airport adopt a new procedure to improve radio communication and minimize accidents.
Crash investigator George Petterson of the National Transportation Safety Board has suggested that the airport consider hiring someone to monitor radio traffic and broadcast advisory bulletins.
Petterson made the comment in light of a fiery crash last August that claimed the life of a Central Valley crop-duster pilot and focused attention on recent accidents at the last private airport in Ventura County.
The midair collision that killed Buttonwillow pilot William Lewis Clark was the third fatal air crash in less than two years at the Santa Paula Airport. The deaths in these recent collisions are the first fatalities at the airport in nearly 30 years.
According to Petterson's preliminary analysis, Clark was flying an improper approach over the city before he turned into the flight path of a plane flown by student pilot Betty Polak of Camarillo.
Also Clark may not have been listening to the correct radio frequency pilots often use to broadcast their movements at Santa Paula Airport. The airport's old radio frequency had been changed several weeks before the accident, Petterson said.
Just 18 months before, a helicopter carrying film actor Kirk Douglas strayed over the runway on takeoff and crashed into a small plane, killing two people and injuring three.
That accident, which killed aerobatic instructor Lee Manelski, 46, and student pilot David S. Tomlinson, 18, received widespread publicity because of injuries to Douglas and cartoon voice actor Noel Blanc, who piloted the helicopter.
Two months later, veteran Hawaiian Airlines pilot Thomas Grist Sr., 51, of Las Vegas and passenger David Knight, 45, of Stockton were killed when their hand-built plane lost power on takeoff and crashed.
Longtime pilots and members of the airport's safety board blame pilots from outside the area for causing two of the crashes. They dismiss the crash caused by a loss of power at takeoff as an unavoidable accident.
"Two people made a mistake and their mistake cost people's lives," said Bruce Dickenson, whose grandfather was one of two ranchers who spearheaded the construction of the airport in 1930.
