The Personal Affront Is One Thing... But What About The Hazard To Fliers Everywhere?

News/Analysis by ANN Editor-In-Chief, Jim Campbell

ANN has received a breathless missive, this morning, from AOPA with a statement from AOPA Boss Craig Fuller expressing outrage about the story that ANN broke yesterday afternoon in which John King outlined his (and Martha's) errant detention, at gunpoint, by the Santa Barbara Police department after they landed at KSBA on Saturday.

Fuller notes that, "This past weekend, two of the most respected members of the general aviation community were ordered from their aircraft at gunpoint by local police in Santa Barbara, California. Confusion about an aircraft registration number led to John and Martha King being placed in handcuffs and put into the back of police cars until the matter was sorted out.

"Simply put, this incident is as outrageous as it is inexplicable and raises serious questions about the coordination of information among federal and local authorities. A $2 app for an iPad and 30 seconds would have discovered sufficient information to raise serious doubt that John and Martha King, who filed and instrument flight plan in a Cessna 172, were transporting an older stolen Cessna 150 whose N-number had long ago been retired and reissued by the FAA.

"We have every right to expect more from our government's security officials than this! The Kings deserve an apology from senior officials with responsibility over the agencies involved and the general aviation community deserves a full accounting of what went wrong and just how the process will be fixed.

"This morning, I have called upon federal and local officials to review the actions surrounding this incident and report to the general aviation community just what happened and how a process that went seriously wrong will be fixed."

Aero-Analysis: While the outrage is justified in regards to the incident in question, AOPA's statements seem more interested in who they occurred to, than in WHAT actually occurred. The Kings were ordered out of a Cessna-owned airplane (operated by the Kings due to the long-standing training contracts they have with that company), at gunpoint, handcuffed and detained separately squad cars for a considerable and uncomfortable period of time before an error was discovered that allowed SBPD to realize that they had goofed and falsely detained two persons without benefit of accurate info. Worse yet, ANN has learned, in further conversations with the Kings that this is the SECOND TIME this aircraft has been the subject of a a police detention... a Cessna factory pilot having dealt with the same issue over a year and a half before!

What AOPA seems to be missing here has nothing to do with who this happened to (outside of the fact that it makes this more noteworthy story, but the fact that this has happened and can continue to happen to aviators all over the nation... and that every time it happens, there is the danger of a misunderstanding or improper action that can result in someone getting hurt or killed.

Mind you, even the Kings realize this. As our conversation with John King yesterday clearly indicated... John was far more concerned about the potential hazard this matter represented to others than he was in the affront/hazard he and Martha suffered, personally. John's main concern was over the fact that when guns are drawn in a confusing, tense, situation; that innocent people can often be hurt or killed as a result. John expressed great concern over this... and brought this matter to our attention solely in the hope that exposing this problem may somehow get enough attention to get corrective action. The security apparatus in this country is desperately and incontrovertibly broken... it needs to be fixed before some suffers serious harm. -- J.R. Campbell, ANN E-I-C

FMI: www.aopa.gov, www.justice.gov