Two are injured, one is missing after a Piper Cherokee was flown at high speed into an office building in Austin, Texas this morning. The individual who flew the airplane into the building, which contained an IRS office, is not believed to have been a certificated pilot. News reports indicate the man set fire to his house then stole the Cherokee from Georgetown Airport, north of Austin. The crash is believed to have been intentional.
We're only a few hours into this thing, and the media is already taking shots at light aircraft security. Frankly, they're right. Obviously, whatever security system was in place at the Georgetown Airport completely failed this morning. This aircraft theft happened in broad daylight at a decently busy airport. I'd bet the perpetrator had little to no difficulty stealing the Cherokee. My guess is that he walked onto the ramp unquestioned, untied the airplane, opened the unlocked door, fired up and took off. Security? What security? There's nothing secure about that at all.
Any security system that relies solely, or even mostly, on trust and faith alone is not truly a security system at all. Most general aviation airports are participants of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association's (AOPA) Airport Watch program which was created after 9/11. The program, while well-intended, does little to increase GA security because it relies primarily on pilots and airport staff to watch for and report suspicious activity. Many aircraft owners and FBOs who rent aircraft leave their aircraft unlocked and unsecured on the ramp, often unattended for long periods of time. And with push-button start systems now much more prevalent in piston airplanes, thieves don't even need a key to start the engine. At my home base, our FBO was good about keeping rental airplanes locked and secured with a prop lock for a short time after 9/11, but we soon reverted to old familiar (and less secure) ways.
The media has attacked GA security before, and the government has threatened to implement increased security requirements for light airplanes. AOPA's rebuttal has been to explain that light aircraft, even when fully loaded, simply can't do that much damage to people or objects on the ground. I think that argument is no longer valid after today's attack on the office building in Austin. The Cherokee involved was not even fully loaded, and it caused extensive structural damage, a couple of injuries to occupants of the building, and possibly even a fatality. That's certainly not 9/11-scale devastation, but it's also not a pinprick. The bottom line is, even a lightly loaded Piper Cherokee can cause sufficiently significant damage to warrant increased security at GA airports. I hate that it's true because that translates to more inconvenience to pilots, but I hate it even more when innocent people on the ground die as a result of aircraft crashes.
I could go on and complain about the nut job who did this horrible deed this morning, and I certainly have some nasty things to say about him. But, I don't think that would be productive for me or my readers. We all know there plenty of nut jobs out there in the world, and sometimes they do stupid things that impact good people. That's just a fact of life, so instead of getting mad, let's make this a call to arms. Let's make our airplanes inaccessible to the nut jobs. Let's take security matters into our own hands before the FAA and TSA forces it on us through increased regulation. We need to start taking aircraft security seriously because innocent people's lives are at stake.
Keep your airplane locked. Further secure it with a propeller lock. Don't leave keys in your airplane! These are a few extremely basic things we can do routinely to enhance GA security. Abiding by these guidelines is hardly an inconvenience.
Like all pilots, I'm concerned about new security regulations being born in the aftermath of today's crash. It's always a pain when we are subject to increased scrutiny by the government because some clown did a bad deed. But, I also believe firmly in putting the safety of innocent people on the ground before anything else, and because our current security system (or lack thereof) made possible today's incident, maybe it's only fair we admit some improvement is necessary in our security department. If it will prevent something like this from happening again, I'm willing to work a little bit harder to insure the safety of innocent bystanders. I hope you are, too.
