Harrison Ford plane crash becomes rallying cry from airport's neighbors
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/06/harrison-ford-plane-crash-rallying-cry-airport-neighbors Version 0 of 1. To his fans, Harrison Ford crash-landing a small second world war-era plane on a California golf course and surviving looked a lot like life imitating art – proof that, at 72, Ford can still pull a stunt worthy of Han Solo or Indiana Jones. But to residents of the tightly packed streets around Santa Monica airport, a facility less than two miles from the beach catering exclusively to private plane aficionados, including Hollywood executives and movie stars, the episode has quickly turned into a rallying cry to get the planes out of the neighborhood once and for all. “Bravo Indiana! Now, can we get rid of that airport?” said Eve Gordon, an actor herself who lives a few blocks away. “The next pilot might not be so lucky or brilliant enough to land on a golf course.” Ford lost engine power minutes after taking off from Santa Monica in his Ryan PT-22 Recruit on Thursday afternoon and landed on the Penmar golf course after a failed attempt to return to the runway. He clipped a tree on his way down and was banged up badly enough to be hospitalized, but did not hurt anyone else and is expected to make a full recovery. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and has already hauled the wreck of the plane to an airport hangar for inspection. In the last 15 years, the neighborhood surrounding the airport has shaken off the last vestiges of its working-class origins and joined the orgy of sky-rocketing house prices that have made Santa Monica one of the most sought after, and least affordable, areas of Los Angeles. Tolerance of the airport – its noise, air traffic and occasional accidents – has plummeted accordingly. Last November, a bruising local political fight resulted in victory for residents who favor wresting control of the airport back from the Federal Aviation Authority when the lease comes up in July and, possibly, closing down part or all of it and converting it into park land. Ford was a prominent campaigner against such local control. He contributed tens of thousands of dollars to a rival campaign, rejected by the voters, that would have left the airport to continue its operations more or less unhindered. The campaign placards from November are still visible in the city – especially the ones saying “No Jets” with a line cutting through a black circle. Ford’s crash may well prove decisive in determining the fate of the 227-acre airport, not least because the current mayor of Santa Monica and the current chair of the Airport Commission are both vehemently anti-airport. “Coincidentally, today I received a letter from an aviation consultant urging pilots to fly additional and unnecessary flights over Santa Monica neighborhoods, apparently as political pressure,” Mayor Kevin McKeown told a local newspaper on Thursday. “This madness must stop.” Because the area around the airport is residential, with houses just a few feet from the airport fence, pilots who run into trouble have almost nowhere to go without risking the lives and property of local residents. One street two blocks from the airport, Ashland Avenue, got renamed Crashland Avenue by some of its residents after a series of accidents in which small planes either landed on roads or smashed into houses. The golf course, which lies just outside the Santa Monica city limits in Los Angeles proper, is generally considered the best of the few options available to pilots whose planes don’t gain enough elevation to be able to return safely to the airport itself. A single-engine Cessna 152 landed on the golf course in 2010, much like Ford’s plane, except in that case the pilot was killed. At one time, the airport looked to Santa Monicans like a decent source of city revenue and a throwback to its history as the home of two aircraft factories manufacturing fighters and bombers for the war against Japan and Nazi Germany. It was attractive to the Hollywood elite because of its location – more accessible to many of their homes than the other busy facility for private planes in Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley. Gentrification has transformed local thinking. While the airport is still an attractive feature for many people – nearby restaurants, playgrounds and parks attract families every day who enjoy watching the planes take off and land – it has become an object of fury for local residents and for local politicians who see it as an eyesore and an obstacle to more sustainable forms of urban planning. The city and the airport commission are considering raising the cost of leases for pilots and plane owners after July. They have also talked about restricting LearJets and other noisy private planes while they decide whether they want to shut the place down altogether. |