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After PDK crash, residents question
safety and who pays for damage
BY JOHN RUCH
johnruch(a)reporternewspapers.net
An explosion jolted John Patterson
awake in his DeKalb County townhome
on Oct. 30. As he and his dog Max fled
the damaged building, he assumed a gas
line had burst because so little was left
of the real cause: a private airplane that
crashed into his home shortly after take
off from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport.
“I said, ‘Where’s the plane?’” Patter
son recalled asking firefighters and other
first responders. “They said, ‘We’re look
ing.’”
The violent crash at 2421 Peachwood
Circle near 1-85 killed the pilot and a pas
senger. Debris smashed a huge hole in
the roof of Patterson’s spare bedroom
and fell through the floor into the kitch
en below. Patterson and his neighbor,
whose unit was badly damaged as well,
were left temporarily homeless.
That day, they joined the unlucky few
who, despite only tiny risks, have had
homes or cars hit by planes falling out of
the sky as they leave or approach PDK.
The accident has revived safety fears
for some residents in the increasingly
dense neighborhoods of Chamblee and
Brookhaven around the county-run pub
lic airport on Clairmont Road.
When a plane does hit a home, those
on the ground face another form of risk
and chance: Who pays for the cleanup
and compensation? There is no federal
requirement for private aircraft owners
or operators to have liability insurance,
and only 11 states - not including Georgia
- mandate some form of financial guar
antees in case of accidents. Total lack of
insurance is rare, but insufficient insur
ance is a significant issue in crashes that
often cause major injuries and property
damage.
Patterson was surprised to learn about
the lack of a federal insurance mandate.
“I thought, ‘I’ve been hit from behind
in my car and I got compensated,”’ he
said. “You can get into a missile full of
fuel [without insurance]?”
Nearly a month after the accident,
Patterson said his attorney was in talks
with the pilot’s insurance company and
had a hitch. The insurance company, he
said, raised a question of whether the pi
lot was covered for the type of flying he
may have been doing, primarily using in
struments rather than by sight.
Following the fatal crash in October,
residents and officials dueled with ac
cident statistics at a Nov. 18 meeting of
the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport Adviso
ry Board, debating just how safe it is to
live near a facility that sees about 150,000
takeoffs and landings a year.
PDK has a long history of accidents,
including an infamous 1973 case where a
jet crashed into a Buford Highway apart
ment building in what is now Brookhav
en, killing seven people on the plane and
severely injuring a resident with burn
ing fuel. The plane crashed due to a bird
strike, in turn blamed on a county-run
landfill next to the airport, and triggered
a legal battle over airport legal liability
that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court, according to media reports.
In the past 20 years, three residential
properties have been hit by planes from
PDK in DeKalb, Brookhaven/Chamblee
and Lilburn. A total of 17 people have
been killed in accidents in that time peri
od, all pilots or passengers. Other planes
from PDK have wrecked in residential or
commercial areas or on highways.
But that does not equate with signif
icant or unusual risk to surrounding
neighbors, said Edward Coleman, a pro
fessor and chair of the Robertson Safety
Institute at the Arizona campus of Em-
bry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
“Statistically speaking, there isn’t
much of a risk,” said Coleman about the
odds of private planes hitting homes near
airports. Crashes are few and, when fatal,
typically kill people in the plane, not on
the ground, he said. “Most accidents hap
pen on or near the airport,” he said.
PDK is one of roughly 3,000 gener
al aviation airports around the country,
meaning it serves civilian pilots rath
er than commercial or military aircraft.
PDK’s services include personal, instruc
tional, corporate, medical and charter
flights.
Commercial airports and airlines are
under heavy federal regulation in terms
of operations and training, while gener
al aviation airports have fewer rules and
are open to private pilots with widely
varying levels of experience. According
to National Transportation Safety Board
statistics, general aviation aircraft are re
sponsible for the vast majority - regular
ly over 95% - of all U.S. accidents and fa
talities.
But the absolute numbers of fatalities
are relatively small and trending down
ward nationally. According to the NTSB’s
most recent compilations, there were 217
general aviation accident fatalities in the
U.S. in 2018, and 207 so far this year. The
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
estimates there are more than 500,000
general aviation pilots licensed in the
U.S. and about 220,000 aircraft.
At the PDK Advisory Board meeting,
the statistics presented by residents and
officials were incomplete and open to in
terpretation. Resident Todd Delaune, a
frequent critic of PDK noise, compiled
Federal Aviation Administration reports
that he said show PDK’s fatalities and
“incidents” are nationally high. But inci
dents aren’t accidents, board members
said, and Coleman later said that PDK’s
fatality numbers don’t sound unusual.
Airport Director Mario Evans present
ed incomplete fatality statistics, empha
sizing that the number is low compared
to the roughly 3-9 million takeoffs and
landings at PDK since 1999. In a separate
set of stats, Evans discussed a type of in
cident called “runway incursions” that
are risky and sometimes damage aircraft
or property, but which fall short of full-