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Flight schools: Breach of trust difficult to prevent
By JEAN HELLER and ALICIA CALDWELL
"I really don't know what we could do that we don't do now," said Scott Pollock, manager of the Tampa Flying Service at Peter O. Knight Airport. "We don't let just anybody preflight an airplane. It depends on the student. If the instructor is convinced the student knows the aircraft and what's expected of him, he'll let the student do the preflight alone." In Tallahassee, Gov. Jeb Bush said the Federal Aviation Administration should consider changing the way it regulates flight schools. "Clearly the FAA needs to look at its responsibilities as it relates to these schools," Bush said after a meeting with Tampa Mayor Dick Greco. "If there are regulations in place, as they are in this case, how do we enforce it? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again?" Many schools allow student pilots to conduct preflight checks alone, even if they haven't done their first solo flight. Student pilot Charles Bishop used that opportunity at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport to steal the Cessna that he crashed into the Bank of America Plaza in Tampa Saturday. Pollock, though, rejected the idea that schools should wait until after the students solo to let them check out the plane alone. "What would be different about him after he solos?" Pollock said. "After he gets his license? After he owns his own plane?" Pollock was one of a half dozen flight school officials who said Monday they would not change their procedures in response to Bishop's flight into the side of the Bank of American Plaza Saturday. They said they weren't sure what they could do that would have any meaning. "I think everybody's evaluating what they do, who gets keys under what circumstances," said Ron Methot, owner and chief pilot of the Albert Whitted Flying Club in St. Petersburg. "We're looking at everybody twice now before we give them keys, but you can't stop somebody from jumping off the Skyway bridge if they're determined to do that." Methot said the club officials do background checks with the St. Petersburg police and drug agencies on pilots they don't know before renting airplanes to them, and at least once declined to rent a plane to someone with a history of mental problems. While David Mitchell of Plant City Airport Services agrees that it would be difficult to stop someone determined to steal an airplane, he said his policy on student pilots changed Monday morning. "We normally let student pilots go out and preflight alone, but not any more," Mitchell said. "From now on, all students who haven't soloed must be accompanied by an instructor." And what would stop a pilot from taking an aircraft after soloing? "Nothing," Mitchell said. "There's no way any of us running flight schools can look inside people's minds and know what they're thinking and feeling." The state's Aviation Office inspects each of Florida's public airports annually for safety concerns and administers a $90-million grant program to address concerns where they are found. But William J. Ashbaker, the state aviation manager, said he doesn't see a problem that money could resolve. "If he stole the airplane, there's nothing that would prevent that," Ashbaker said. In a statement posted on its Web site, the national Association of Flight Instructors urged its members to acknowledge the concerns raised by the Tampa incident and to scrutinize students carefully, but to explain to the public that general aviation is not a significant national security threat It was a sentiment echoed by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the nation's largest general aviation organization. "This was not a breach of security, this was an abuse of trust," said AOPA president Phil Boyer. "An apparently troubled young man who had legitimate access to an aircraft abused the trust of his flight instructor and stole the airplane with tragic results." Tom Davis, who operates small airports in Crystal River and Inverness, said he will continue to allow students to make preflight checks alone. "That's all part of the training process," Davis said. "I'm considering no change other than heightened awareness of student behavior. . . . You just can't go out overreacting to isolated incidents like that." -- Times staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report.
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