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American Morning

Tampa Plane Crash Has Renewed Concerns about Security at Smaller Airports

Aired January 08, 2002 - 07:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, we're getting new facts and some frightening new details in the story of the 15-year-old student pilot, Charles Bishop, who crashed his stolen plane into a Tampa building over weekend.

CNN's Mark Potter has a minute by minute account of exactly what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Police say 15-year- old Charles Bishop stole a Cessna 172 from this flight line at an aviation school. According to several sources, he then took off from Clearwater around 4:50 Saturday afternoon. He flew close to Tampa International Airport, just as a Southwest Airlines 737 jet like this one was taking off for New Orleans with 129 people aboard. The control tower warned the jet pilot of the approaching Cessna and told him to level off so the Cessna could fly overhead.

JOE FORMOSA, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: When he saw him, they were 1,000 feet apart. Southwest was around 2,700 feet and the Cessna was around 3,700 feet.

POTTER: A Southwest spokesman says at no time was safety compromised. Meanwhile, the control tower in Clearwater had alerted MacDill Air Force Base that a plane piloted by a 15-year-old student was headed there next.

LT. COL. RICH MCLAIN, U.S. AIR FORCE: At that time he was about three miles outside of our air space. He entered our air space about a minute later and was in our air space for somewhere around a minute.

POTTER: Around 4:58, MacDill called a Coast Guard helicopter to give chase. The chopper spotted the plane now headed for downtown Tampa and closed in, signaling the boy to stop.

GARY KONEFAL, WITNESS: They were side by side. And a friend of mine said, ``Boy, they're really close. It looks that looks kind of strange.''

POTTER: But the Cessna kept going, headed for the Bank of America building, where it crashed into the 28th floor. Tampa police say their first reports, from an officer and a citizen, came at 5:05 as calls flooded into 911.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tampa fire rescue. What's the address of the emergency?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's on the corner of Kennedy and Ashley. It's the Bank of America building. A plane just flew into it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

POTTER: Pentagon officials will now review their security proceeds at MacDill Air Force Base and Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, says he will ask the FAA to change the way it regulates flight schools, adding that state officials will have their own recommendations -- Paula.

ZAHN: Thanks so much for that update, Mark. Appreciate it.

The Tampa plane crash has renewed concerns about security at smaller airports. Just how vulnerable might we be to terrorists using a small plane to try to do some major damage?

Well, here's CNN's Charles Feldman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Santa Monica Airport in southern California is much like small airports all across the United States. All that separates the general public from these aircraft is often nothing more than a chain link fence that, as you can see, is usually pretty easy to open.

Of course, once you're inside that gate, it does help to know what you're doing around an airplane. And for most pilots who rent an aircraft, unless, of course, they own their own, the process is usually pretty simple. You go to a place that rents airplanes and among the first things you do is you produce your pilot's license.

And that may be part of the problem, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. That organization has made a number of security recommendations, among them, to issue new, difficult to counterfeit pilot certificates, to check that pilots are not on any terrorist watch list and to urge aircraft owners to take appropriate steps to prevent the theft of their own aircraft.

While some aviation experts favor more security for general aviation, others think the issue is being grossly exaggerated.

JOE JUSTICE, JUSTICE AVIATION: Those of us in aviation feel somewhat mistreated by the overall press because of the sensationalism of this. If it happens in the next 30 years as much as it happened in the last 30 years, I think we're doing quite well, actually.

FELDMAN: But even if somebody manages to get inside a small plane, it doesn't mean they're going anywhere. Because one of the built in safety features of a small plane, if you will, is that unlike a car, it's not that easy to start. You don't just take your key and turn the ignition. You really have to know what you're doing.

Once in the airplane, and especially if you're flying, as we are now, under visual flight rules, if you're up to no good and you want to smack the plane into one of those mountains or one of those big buildings down there, there's really very little anybody could do about that.

It's sort of a mixed bag when it comes to safety issues. But those recommendations by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, according to some flight schools and rental agencies, may go a long way to making general aviation flying a lot safer.

Charles Feldman, CNN, at Santa Monica Airport in California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And right now we're going to talk more about small airport security with Greg Feith, former senior NTSB investigator. He joins us from Denver this morning. Welcome. And in Washington, Ed Bolen, president and CEO of GAMA, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Welcome to you, as well.

ED BOLEN, GAMA PRESIDENT: Good morning.

ZAHN: Glad to have both of you with us this morning.

Actually, gentlemen, you're going to get upstaged by the president right now, who is getting ready to head to several cities later today. He is leaving Washington, D.C. He will be traveling to Ohio, New Hampshire and Massachusetts to highlight some of the bipartisan cooperation he says helped forge some sort of reconciliation on education.

This bill that he has signed and they will be celebrating the passage of is the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. It is seen as the most sweeping federal school legislation since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. We will be following the president throughout the day. Once again, his first stop will be in Ohio, followed by New Hampshire and then later on to Massachusetts.

OK, let's go back to Greg Feith and Ed Bolen to continue our conversation about some of the concerns about general aviation in this country. Thanks for your patience, gentlemen.

So, Greg, is there any regulation that could have been put in place that would have stopped Charles Bishop from doing what he did?

GREG FEITH, FORMER NTSB INVESTIGATOR: No, unfortunately you can't regulate someone's psyche. This was a distraught young man who was intent on doing something. Unfortunately for the aviation community he used an airplane to make a statement and took his own life. But he could have done the same thing with a car or a gun or some other means.

ZAHN: Let me play a small part of what the former NTSB chief investigator, Peter Goelz, said yesterday that basically contradicts what you just said. Let's listen together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER GOELZ, FORMER NTSB CHIEF INVESTIGATOR: I think that I believe in what the president said to me on September 11, "We're at war and we've got to start doing things differently." And I don't think the general aviation community has really taken that to heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: So, Greg, why wouldn't tightening any regulations make any difference at all?

FEITH: Because it's very, it's just impossible to know if someone is actually going to use that airplane when they get in for a weapon of destruction. I investigated a number of accidents over 22 years, not only general aviation, but in commercial aviation, as well, where someone has decided that they were going to use the airplane and do an intentional act.

As we recall, Egypt Air, a lot of speculation surrounds Egypt Air as being an intentional act, and that's a commercial air carrier with a professional pilot who goes through a background check, who goes through a psychological profile as part of their employment, yet they were still able to do something intentionally with that aircraft. So you can't regulate that.

And unfortunately this young man had access to an airplane. And just from what I've heard so far and been able to gain from his background, he was going to make a statement, and this was a way for him to make that statement using an airplane.

ZAHN: Ed, what about that? And what about the concerns that a number of pilots across the country have expressed that you'd be taking away some of their rights if you tightened regulations, regulations they think, as Greg just said, won't make any difference at all?

BOLEN: Well, I think when you look at what the general aviation community is doing -- and I have to take issue with what Peter Goelz said earlier. I think the lessons from September 11 have been very much on the minds of the people in the general aviation community. And in response to that, we've brought in some outside security experts to help look at the industry and try to determine how we can enhance security.

What we found from talking to the experts is they think that the industry is secure to begin with because it has so much federal regulation -- pilots already registered with the federal government, planes already registered, a close knit community at airports.

But working with the security people, we have been able to develop additional recommendations which have been forwarded, and they were discussed earlier in the program, the AOPA and GAMA recommendations, that we think would build on the secure system and further enhance it against terrorist attack. Now, whether or not any of those recommendations would have prevented what happened in Florida is an open question, because these are recommendations that were designed to address a terrorist threat and here we have a disturbed youth and it really does not fit the mold which we were looking for.

ZAHN: Ed, would you agree this morning, though, for starters it might make a lot of sense for pilots to have to have a photo on their flying certificate?

BOLEN: That's exactly one of the recommendations that we have made to the federal government. Right now in, as we've talked with the security experts, they feel that the fact that pilots are already registered with the federal government, already have their addresses there is a big step forward. But there is still an open question, when you go to an airport and show an I.D., you're not showing something with your picture on it. So the description that is on the card may or may not accurately describe the person. And we think something that is tamper proof, that has a photo I.D., would be a step forward, and that's what we're pushing the federal government for.

ZAHN: Greg, need a final thought from you this morning. Do you agree with that? Is that a good way to go?

FEITH: I agree with Ed. One of the things that -- I'm a general aviation pilot and one of the things that really upsets me is the fact that we do, we basically self police, especially since 9-11. And so everybody is on a heightened alert as far as the general aviation community is concerned so if there is something abnormal, we'll be the first ones to point it out.

But unfortunately in Mr. Bishop's case, there was no way for anyone to know what he was intending to do with that airplane.

ZAHN: All right, we're going to leave it there this morning.

Greg Feith, thanks so much for waking up early in Denver for us this morning. Ed Bolen, we appreciate your time, as well.

FEITH: Thank you.

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