Editorial: Aviation concerns justify more security

Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2002 | 8:37 a.m.

Over the weekend, 15-year-old Charles Bishop -- he wasn't even old enough to obtain a driver's license -- stole a Cessna and crashed the plane into a 42-story office building in Tampa. During his suicide flight, Bishop even was able to fly through restricted air space over MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military's Central Command is overseeing the war in Afghanistan. Bishop was the only one who died, but the crash was a serious reminder of Sept. 11 nonetheless.

There are 18,000 small airports that handle an estimated 340,000 student and private pilots in the United States, so it wouldn't be practical to implement the same level of security at small airports as is being done at the large metropolitan airports in the wake of Sept. 11. And it admittedly is impossible to put in place security measures that always will foil terrorists. Still, the federal government should require some steps to be taken to improve security at the small airports, measures that include controlling access to the airfields, maintaining closer oversight of who is flying the planes and increasing the scrutiny of people who are taking flying lessons.