Editorial Decries Lack Of Tower And Flight Plan In Quadruple Fatal

The crash of a Mooney M20 Thursday night in Watsonville, California has fanned the coals of a heated local debate about residential encroachment on airports. Witnesses say the plane went down as the pilot tried to clear a fog bank, and describe a slow, nose-high attitude which sounds like a departure stall. Two adults and two children died.

Mooney M20 File Photo

As sad as that is, the bigger issue in the community is the report by local police that the plane came down in the parking lot of Watsonville Community Hospital, slid 50-75 yards, and hit what was fortunately an unoccupied medical office building connected to the hospital. The NTSB has assigned Michael Huhn as the lead investigator in the case.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel published an editorial Sunday which notes the accident has locals wringing their hands about airports being so close to people. The editorial says the crash, "...has already renewed concerns about the proximity of the city's airport to the local hospital, as well as residential neighborhoods...

"The airport is owned by the city and does not have a control tower; pilots are not required to file flight plans before taking off."

If these comments make your blood boil, perhaps you'll be consoled by the comments posted by readers on the newspaper's website. One writes, "Editors, your first sentence should read, 'the hospital's proximity to the airport'", not the other way around. The airport was deeded to the city in 1942. The hospital wasn't there till 1998.

Another poster took the editors to task for their comments about no control tower and no requirement to file a flight plan, calling the observations red herrings. "What is significant is the fact that governmental entities continue to fight to encroach on airports because of the open spaces surrounding them. They do this with taxpayer money that could be better put to use elsewhere."

Other comments include one recognizing the economic value of the airport to the area.

In times past, it was fairly common for reporters unfamiliar with aviation to look at preliminary accident reports, see the notations that the airport was not tower-controlled and no flight plan was filed, and present those boilerplate items as relevant. But in the past two years it's become increasingly unusual to see even inexperienced, general media reporters make these errors.

Then again, summer interns have only been on the job a couple of weeks...

FMI: www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_18449670