Charter flights fill the friendly skies: private flights have become popular with business travelers who have more money than time and don't want to be inconvenienced by tighter airport security

Insight on the News, Feb 18, 2002 by Sheila R. Cherry

Americans who can afford it have figured out how to bypass the security chaos at the nation's airports by renting or leasing private aircraft. Air Charter Guide conducted a random survey of 74 charter-aircraft operators and brokers shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in which hijacked commercial airliners and their captive passengers were used in kamikaze assaults on landmarks in New York City and Washington. Within two weeks, charter-aircraft companies reported an 80 percent increase in business-related bookings, according to the survey summary.

A month later another survey was undertaken to determine whether the charter spike was anomaly or the beginning of a trend. It showed an even larger number of charter flights, as 84 percent of respondents confirmed that inquiries had remained high, with much of the demand coming from travelers considering the option of air charter for the first time. Some operators reported that as many as 90 percent of their inquiries were from new or first-time charter customers, but with the average running about 30 percent, the industry publisher reported.

Are charter passengers just flying above the neurotic fray of airport screeners, bomb-sniffing dogs and unknown threats, or have they them selves become another risk in the air?

When suspected al-Qaeda terrorist Hani Hanjour went to Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md., to rent a plane during August 2001 he encountered problems. He first had to be evaluated by two pilots. Hanjour flew so poorly the flight instructors became suspicious and required him to demonstrate more fully that he could handle the aircraft, something he never did to their satisfaction.

"On many occasions he needed help landing the plane," chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard tells INSIGHT. So Hanjour never was cleared to rent one of Freeway's four-seat, propeller-driven planes that Bernard describes as weighing "less than the family car." But he and his fellow flight students did manage to hijack and crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

Despite their success in scrutinizing the suspected terrorist to frustration and denying him an aircraft, Freeway new ertheless was one of several small Maryland airports that were shut down because of their proximity to a protected 15-mile radius, starting from the Washington Monument, that the National Security Agency (NSA) established after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bernard soon was left with only four employees on the payroll -- down from 30 before Sept. 11 -- fuming that the general-aviation airport and flight school as a result had lost more than $300,000 in income. "We're a scapegoat," he says of the 45-year-old facility. "It is as if we were being held responsible." Adding to the indignation of the closed airports was a $15 billion federal bailout of the commercial-airline industry.

Bernard questions the common sense of the postattack federal response. "What is wrong with these people," he wants to know, noting that NSA officials at first had considered posting law-enforcement officers at the airfields 24 hours a day. "I can't imagine they think we're just going to sit here and watch while some guy backs up a truck loaded with explosives and loads it on an airplane," says the incredulous Bernard.

On Dec. 19, 2001, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced that his agency was relaxing the flight restrictions imposed on general aviation in 30 major metropolitan areas, including Freeway and all but three of the Maryland airports that were shut down after Sept. 11. But Hyde Field in Clinton, Potomac Airfield in Friendly and College Park Airport -- the nation's oldest continuously operated airport -- remain closed, and certain forms of flight training there remain restricted.

On Jan. 5, flight instructors stood by and watched as 15-year-old flight student Charles Bishop absconded with a single-engine Cessna 172 in Florida, flew over Fort MacDill Air Force Base and committed suicide by flying the small plane into a 42-story building in Tampa. Unlike the terrorists who hijacked fuel-laden jumbo jets in September, the teenager, reportedly acting alone, did little damage and killed only himself.

Private-pilot groups, in an attempt to stem a resurgence of negative news resulting from months of federal scrutiny, responded quickly. "The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association [AOPA] is concerned about safety and committed to the secure and safe operation of small aircraft. But you can't predict a suicide. No amount of security would have prevented that young person from taking his own life. A teen-ager committing violent acts, whether against self or others, is an issue that reaches far beyond aviation in this country," wrote Keith Mordoff, AOPP/s senior vice president, in response to several newspaper editorials.

The episode is reminiscent of another September 11 -- Sunday, Sept. 11, 1994. According to a 1995 White House security review, a similar fate lured Frank Eugene Corder. After spending an evening using alcohol and crack cocaine, Corder, an unlicensed student pilot, trespassed onto Aldino Airport in Churchville, Md., and stole a Cessna in which he had taken lessons. Radar detected the two-hour joyride around the Baltimore-Washington vicinity and near York, Pa., before Corder crashed the plane into the Executive Mansion at 1:49 a.m. the next day.