CAA: GA News, "Florida officials find security at small airports lacking"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Saturday, February 23, 2002 

FDLE finds security at small airports lacking
The Associated Press 


CLEARWATER, Fla. - A review of the state's 298 small airfields found
widespread security shortcomings, prompting Florida to ask the federal
government to help assess airport security measures.

More than 80 percent of the airports didn't check the identification of
people entering the property, Florida Department of Law Enforcement
agents found.

More than 70 percent of the airfields didn't require pilots to secure
their planes from theft. Nearly 60 percent lacked fences surrounding
aircraft or fuel storage areas, FDLE said.

Agents made the rounds of the airfields after 15-year-old Charles Bishop
stole a single-engine plane last month in Pinellas County and crashed it
into a building in downtown Tampa.

The Federal Aviation Administration currently regulates security at the
state's 19 commercial airports, such as Tampa, Orlando and Miami
international airports. But the FAA does not oversee security at general
aviation airports, leaving it to the individual air parks.

"We are all for security and all for safety, but it has to be reasonable
and there has to be a way to pay for it," said Monty Burgess, director
of Albert Whitted Municipal Airport, a general aviation airport in the
Tampa Bay area.

FDLE wants the FAA to make recommendations and provide assistance in
inspection and security enforcement for the smaller airfields, said
Steve Lauer, chief of the state agency's domestic security initiative.

State officials said that while agents may have found security at
smaller airports to be lacking, they may have had unrealistic
expectations.

"We don't want to impose uniform standards on airfields that would have
the effect of putting them out of business," Lauer said. "That kind of
cookie-cutter approach we can't use. The idea is not to overreact to
this with the airfields."

Gov. Jeb Bush believes small airfield security is an FAA issue and not a
state issue, said Elizabeth Hirst, a Bush spokeswoman.


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