Terrorism concerns ground small planes

Small aviators see business evaporate as airspace restrictions make flying virtually impossible.

[Times photo: James Borchuck] Many small planes, including those that operate under visual flight rules rather than instruments, remain grounded after last week's terrorist attacks.

By JEAN HELLER and JENNIFER GOLDBLATT

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 21, 2001

The phones at the Albert Whitted Flying Club are answered by a machine. The flying school at St. Petersburg's downtown airfield is closed.

Tampa Flying Service Inc. at Peter O. Knight Airport has no flying business. The maintenance shop is catching up on work, and when it's done, there is no more waiting in the wings.

At Tampa Bay Executive Airport in Pasco County, virtually all of its 105 aircraft are grounded.

No blimps will roam the skies over weekend sporting events, no news helicopters or traffic reporters. No banner-towing planes.

As airlines try to claw their way toward some semblance of normalcy, the largest segment of American aviation -- in terms of numbers of planes -- remains grounded.

General aviation, which includes everything from charter jets to two-seat flight trainers, was forced out of the skies along with the airliners when the Federal Aviation Administration closed American airspace.

Only a small percentage of those aircraft has been given the all-clear, specifically charters and other aircraft equipped to be flown on instruments, with transponders that identify their locations, two-way radios, flight plans identifying routes and destinations, and pilots licensed for instrument flight.

This excludes 70 percent of the 170,000 air trips flown daily nationwide before Sept. 11 by pilots who eyeball their way from place to place and who aren't required to file flight plans.

These planes, which fly under visual flight rules, are permitted in the air today only if they do not fly under, over or through the rigorously controlled airspace that surrounds every major airport in the country and extends well out from the runways. That restricted airspace was enlarged after last week's attacks. Like a huge umbrella, Tampa International Airport's restricted airspace extends from south of Sarasota, north into Hernando County, east to Lakeland and west over the Gulf of Mexico. No VFR flights can operate anywhere within TIA's umbrella or that of any other major airport in the country.

And where major airports are clustered tightly, as they are in Florida, it would be hard to find a route to anywhere that didn't touch restricted airspace.

"It's like trying to drive someplace and encountering a roadblock every time you make a turn," said Susan Hardman, deputy director of operations for general aviation for the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority. "By the time you flew around all the restricted airspace, it would take you longer to fly a plane somewhere than it would to take your car."

The problem with VFR flights, FAA officials say, is that the pilots' intentions and destinations can't be known, and a small plane packed with explosives could do a considerable amount of damage.

But the open-ended restrictions are causing as much damage to general aviation as the groundings and small passenger counts are doing to the airlines.

"There is no business," said Scott Pollock, manager of Tampa Flying Service. "If things continue the way they are, it doesn't make any sense for any of us to stay in business."

"Financially, it's a huge burden," said Bob Cooper, owner of National Aviation at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. "We haven't been generating any revenue since this started, and flight schools aren't extremely profitable to begin with."

In Hillsborough County, Vandenberg Airport is seeing some charter traffic, but nothing even approaching normal, Hardman said.

"Nothing's flying at Plant City to speak of, and they're only selling about 50 gallons of fuel a day," she added. "It's very difficult, and we don't know when it will end."

At Tampa North Aero Park in Pasco County, owner Charlie Brammer has a flight school, maintenance painting facilities and aircraft tie-downs. In seven days, he estimates that he has lost about $7,500. About 50 students were in flight school when they were grounded.

"The guy that pumps gas is mowing the grass," said Brammer.

One of the exceptions to the no-fly rule for general aviation aircraft are the planes flying mosquito spraying missions in an effort to prevent outbreaks of West Nile virus, but events have conspired to make those operations more complicated.

The flooding left by Tropical Storm Gabrielle left thousands of mosquito breeding grounds, and the spraying delay caused by the aircraft grounding allowed many mosquitoes that could have been killed in concentrated numbers as larva to mature and spread to wider areas.

- Times staff writer Collins Conner contributed to this report.

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