CAA: GA News, "GA airports in Ohio stepping up security"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Monday, December 2, 2002

Small airports in Ohio stepping up security
The Associated Press


COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio's general aviation airports, which have taken
steps to improve security since Sept. 11 like their bigger counterparts,
are now asking pilots to do more to keep an eye out for possible
trouble.

"It is very important that we watch who is at the airports and people
who are not normally there," said Alan Harding, a Columbus pilot and
member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Harding and other general aviation pilots will be asked to watch for and
report suspicious activities. The program also includes a toll-free
number, 866-GA-SECURE, that pilots can call.

Harding, a private pilot for nearly 40 years, flies out of Don Scott
Field in Franklin County. The airport, operated by Ohio State
University, is one of 174 public use operations in Ohio. The general
aviation sites tend to be smaller and cater to corporate and private
tenants.

"The entire flying public has to be more vigilant and active with what
is going on. It is not good enough to say airplanes can't do damage,"
said Khalid Bahhur, who manages Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland,
where an average of 100,000 takeoffs, landings and touch-and-goes occur
annually.

Like other public use general aviation airports, Burke has stepped up
security in the past year. It has increased patrols and inspections of
vehicles that enter the runway, escorts fuel tankers on and off the
runway and checks the drivers' identifications and manifests.

At Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, $300,000 has been spent this year to
improve security, and Cincinnati police established a substation in the
passenger terminal, manager Dan Dickten said.

But an aviation critic said more needs to be done.

"The government still licenses anyone who wants to be a pilot," said
Mary Schiavo, who learned to fly at Don Scott.

"They have to reassess how we train pilots and who is behind the yoke."

Security improvements already were in the works at Don Scott before
Sept. 11. But airport director Doug Hammon said the terrorist attacks
"got us to really assess how we operate and do things that a year and a
half ago we would have just looked at and said, `Why is that a
problem?'"

The next step will be to limit access to nearly 200 private planes
parked and stored at the field, which will require changing the mindset
of pilots who have the freedom to come and go as they please.

Harding said limited access could encroach on pilots' civil liberties.
He figures his four-seat Piper, which carries about 30 gallons of
gasoline, could hardly be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

But it can, said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and
security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which has
campuses in Florida and Arizona.

If a terrorist used a small plane to "wipe out a small church or school
in Nebraska or Iowa, the message would be `We can go anywhere at
anytime,'" Bloom said.


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