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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With John King

Aired January 06, 2002 - 10:02   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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get right to those three small plane crashes. Government officials now say there is no terrorist thread connecting the Saturday afternoon incidents in California, Florida, and Colorado. Though now dismissed as unrelated, the rapid- fire succession of the crashed prompted a briefing of both the President and his Director of Homeland Security.

The image most hauntingly reminiscent of the September 11 attacks is from Tampa. A 15-year-old student pilot was at the controls when the CESSNA barreled into a skyscraper. Investigators say he took off without permission and ignored the commands of a Coast Guard helicopter that intercepted the flight.

The pilot of this single-engine Cessna died northwest of Boulder, Colorado. Investigators returned to the remote area this morning to search for a possible cause.

At about the same time, a twin-engine plane sputtered and plunged into a neighborhood in Orange County, California. The site's about three blocks from the airport. The pilot is dead. Investigators aren't sure whether there were other people aboard.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We're joined now for more on that story out of Tampa by Amani Channel of our affiliate WTVT.

Good morning, Amani, what's the situation there now?

AMANI CHANNEL, WTVTC REPORTER: Good morning, Kyra. The remnants of that small Cessna plane had been removed from the Bank of America building here in downtown Tampa. The wreckage has been dismantled. The pieces are now at a local airport where NTSB officials have started their inspection and their investigation. Now both the 28th and 29th floors of this building were damaged when the teenage pilot flew right into it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice over): The tail of the single engine CESSNA airplane dangled dangerously from the Bank of America Building in downtown Tampa for hours before emergency workers pulled the wreckage inside the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You think the worst when you hear that. I mean, if a plane crashed into a building today, oh my God, that's never happened here.

CHANNEL: Saturday evening, investigators say 15-year-old Charles Bishop, a student pilot, crashed into the 28th and 29th floors, moments after taking off from the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport.

UNIDENTIFIED TEENAGER: I didn't think he would actually do something like that. He seemed nice.

UNIDENTIFIED TEENAGER: Yes, he was pretty quiet. I never saw him talk to anybody.

CHANNEL: Investigators say Bishop was flying alone and he wasn't cleared for takeoff. A Coast Guard helicopter was alerted and tried to make contact with the young pilot moments before the plane plowed into the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Both wings seem to have come off into the middle of Ashley Street, and I guess that's why all the gasoline probably leaked out at that point. This could have been a lot worse, and certainly could have been much, much worse if it were some terrorist act. Thankfully, those things didn't happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANNEL: 15-year-old Charles Bishop was the only person who died in this crash. If it were during the week, things could have been much more tragic here.

Now another concern is that this building has not been completely secured. There is still loose debris that is up there. Fire officials say that they hope this gets secured as soon as possible.

And the other issue, prior to crashing into the building, Charles Bishop flew over McGill Air Force Base, which is of course restricted. These are all part of the investigation, which is ongoing. Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Amani, do you know anything about this young boy, or the family? Have you had a chance to talk to relatives? A lot of people want to know if this was a copycat type of incident, or if this was just a young man that was extremely confused and didn't know what to do.

CHANNEL: We don't know that right now. All we know is that his grandparents dropped him off at that airport over in Clearwater at about 4:30. He spoke to his flight instructor. He was getting into the airplane without the flight instructor going over some pre-flight drills, when he took off and proceeded onto his path right here that ended in downtown Tampa. Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Amani Channel, affiliate WTVT, thank you so much. Martin.

SAVIDGE: We want to talk more about these plane crashes with someone close to the aviation industry, John King, an aviation training or he owns rather, a training company and he is also a former commercial pilot, and he joins us from San Diego, California this morning. Thank you sir, coming in on this, what is an extremely early hour for you this morning.

JOHN KING, FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR: Good morning.

SAVIDGE: Is there any way to ascertain from what little we know as to the intent of this young pilot in Florida?

KING: My goodness, no. The only thing we can say for sure is this was a tragedy for his family, and a tragedy for the instructor involved, and I would just say it's a very sad personal case.

SAVIDGE: The issue seems to point out what potentially could be some serious questions of security pertaining to general aviation, I guess least of which could be the fact that he was able to take off by himself, grabbing the aircraft. If this had been someone with truly evil intent, it makes you rather nervous.

KING: Well, it does but we have to make a decision. I think fundamentally in society is how far are we going to let these terrorists force us to change our society?

You know, you'd have to have really extreme measures to stop someone who was trusted, who was taking flight lessons at the time, to stop that person from having access to the airplane. It would be an extreme thing to do and I think it would be allowing the terrorists to disrupt our society far too much.

SAVIDGE: Well say it wasn't a student, or maybe it was a terrorist that decided to act as a student. How do you prevent that?

KING: Well it would be difficult to prevent that. You know, we're an open society. We're vulnerable to that kind of thing. The INS does screening of foreigners who come in, and I think the INS could do a far better job than they did.

But I would hate to see us change every single aspect of our lives, including general aviation, as an overreaction to this kind of incident.

SAVIDGE: What about protecting the aircraft, keeping the keys locked up, keeping it monitored by someone, even if the pilot has to step away?

KING: Well that's done now, of course. And the situation here is, the student as I understand it, was pre-fiving (ph) the airplane, getting ready to fly the airplane. So you really wouldn't, couldn't deny the student access to the aircraft under those circumstances.

You know, people misuse all sorts of things. They misuse trucks. They misuse cars. They misuse airplanes. And that doesn't mean in our society, we want to quit using these things just because they can be misused.

SAVIDGE: Yes, and another area perhaps that you have an understanding of, at least with your background being from the commercial airlines, the plane takes off. They scramble fighters to intercept, but when you're talking about a small plane, what could those fighters have possibly done?

KING: Well, they can signal to the aircraft that they want it to land, and if it's a mistake and the pilot all of a sudden becomes aware, my goodness, I'm getting a lot of attention, which is planned.

But if the pilot doesn't want to comply, there aren't many options except to wait until the plane is in a place where it's not going to cause damage on the ground and shoot it down. That would be an extreme measure and to my knowledge that's never been done in the United States.

SAVIDGE: Do you think that general aviation has suffered unfairly as a result of the terrorist attacks?

KING: Well, society has suffered unfairly as a result of this. There's nothing just about a terrorist attack. Of course general aviation has been the victim of this, but so have all of the rest of us.

SAVIDGE: Well, what I meant by that were the restrictions that were initially placed, some still on aircraft that are used privately.

KING: Well, you know, a lot of people ask me to explain the justification behind that and the reason behind that and the point is that this was a highly emotional thing for the United States as a whole.

You couldn't justify those things. You couldn't say, well this is logical and this is something we should have done. But I can't certainly argue against them. It would be very hard to say that we shouldn't have taken extreme reaction to this when it first happened.

So, yes we did suffer and it was unfortunate, but my goodness this whole event has been very unfortunate, and we're getting close to back to normal. So it's a lot better than it could be.

SAVIDGE: John King, thank you very much. Hopefully we'll find out what was behind yesterday's incidents. Thank you again for coming in.

KING: Thanks, Martin.

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