SMO Under Fire Again

On July 1, pilot Robert Davenport was practicing touch and goes at Santa Monica Airport when his airplane crashed on a local golf course and he was killed.

At most airports in the country, the tragedy would be noted, perhaps a memorial held and there would be an FAA or NTSB investigation to see what went wrong.

Not at beleaguered Santa Monica, Calif., of course.

A Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl is not only trying to shut down the flight school the plane belonged to, Venice residents are seeking support to halt a variety of landing maneuvers, including touch and goes.

Davenport’s tragic crash at Penmar Golf Course has suddenly brought renewed attention to the general aviation airport from lawmakers, the airfield’s neighbors and local organizations that have been lobbying for increased safety enhancements and air quality studies at the airport.

Rosendahl, whose council district includes Venice, requested that the procedure Davenport was practicing be halted and the flight school where he was taking landing training be closed.

“I think it’s a safety issue that has got to be dealt with, and I would like to start by shutting that school down,” the councilman said. “This is not a location for training when you’re in a dense urban environment.”

Davenport, who was a licensed commercial pilot, was training at Justice Aviation, a Santa Monica flight school, to practice the maneuver.

But on July 20, the Venice Neighborhood Council submitted a motion at its  meeting to send a letter to a number of lawmakers asking to support eliminating the landing maneuver.

“People are afraid because many of them live over (she probably meant ‘under’) the flight path,” Laura Silagi, the chair of the local council’s airport committee, said prior to the board meeting.

“If you didn’t have (‘touch and go’ maneuvers) you would have a lot (fewer) flights over Venice.”

Santa Monica Airport Manager Robert Trimborn says the airfield has several restrictions on the various types of aircraft landings, including the touch and go procedure.

“We have restrictions on touch and go and ‘stop and go’ on weekends, holidays and weekdays, from one hour after sunset to 7 a.m. of the following morning,” Trimborn told The Santa Monica Argonaut.

The resolution approved by the council also wants to ban “taxi-backs.” The hourly prohibitions on landings do not apply to taxi-backs, and these aforementioned conditions do not apply in emergencies, where necessitated by safety considerations or when required by the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Santa Monica’s municipal code.

But Martin Rubin, the executive director of Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution, says despite the limitations on certain landings, residents of Santa Monica and nearby Mar Vista and North Westdale are still at risk.

“Enforcement of weekend and hours of restrictions on ‘touch-and-goes’ does not remove the risks from the other practice flights,” Rubin declared. “Santa Monica Airport claims to be neighbor friendly, but the constant irritation of noisy piston planes flying around and around is not at all neighbor friendly to Venice and Mar Vista neighbors.” They’ve also come out against jets.

Like Rosendahl, Rubin cites the residential neighborhoods in close proximity of the airport as one of his reasons for requesting the cessation of the landing procedure.

“It is reckless to allow students to practice takeoffs and landings over a densely populated area,” he said. “Schools for pilots should be located in an area that minimizes every safety risk.” (Like, maybe, Alaska?)

Trimborn said Santa Monica Airport has a safety and noise abatement record that he and the airport’s employees are very proud of and one they work hard to maintain, the paper said.

“We have one of the most stringent noise abatement and operational restriction systems in the entire country,” the airport director said. “I would put our record against just about anyone’s.”