PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – A history of crashes plaguing North Perry Airport has Pembroke Pines’ mayor calling for a new safety audit after another stunning small plane crash in the neighborhood of Pines Village.
It was a scary close call Sunday for neighbors like Giovanna Hanely.
“My father-in-law, he is a first responder himself, so he knew what to do, jumped into action, started recovering and giving care to individuals on the plane,” Hanely said. “Our neighbors were also doing all the heroic saving, one grabbed an axe, one grabbed a fire extinguisher.”
Hanely said this isn’t the first time they have experienced such incidents in Pines Village.
Residents remain haunted by the 2021 death of 4-year-old Taylor Bishop, who died when a plane crashed into his mom’s SUV.
Hanely, who has lived in the area for 10 years and is friends with the Bishop family, said there have been “no new safety measures.”
Pembroke Pines Mayor Angelo Castillo said crashes involving the county-owned airport, in his mind, are “increasingly a problem.”
“These are 35 crashes that I have right here based on federal data within the city of Pembroke Pines,” Castillo said. “In addition, we have planes that have ditched in the Everglades, and that is too many.”
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The U.S. Navy built the airport in 1943 and it was acquired by Broward County in 1957.
“When this airport from the World War II-era was built, it was surrounded by basically corn fields,” attorney and aviation expert Willard Shepard said.
In the decades since, development has encroached upon its perimeters. Houses are just a few feet away from its runways.
“This is no one’s fault. It’s simply development that happened in this part of Broward County over the last eight decades,” Shepard said. “If you go back historically, nothing was out here before and now all of this has been built up around the airport and we have this situation where residents have a concern of what can happen at any day at any time.”
“We now have 500,000 people who live in just a short five-mile radius — most of these general aviation airports are in remote areas or in industrial areas,” Castillo said.
Pembroke Pines’ mayor is now calling for Broward County to conduct a safety audit.
“It has become clearer and clearer here in Pembroke Pines that North Perry Airport is increasingly constituting a threat to the health and safety of our community,” Castillo said.
Representatives from the Broward County Aviation Department provided Local 10 News with a copy of a safety assessment report conducted in 2021.
In it, the county notes that the accident rate at North Perry Airport “appears to be significantly less than the current national average,” with “1.8 accidents per 100,000 general aviation operations and a fatal accident rate of 0.39.”
Read the report:
“It is important to note that the Broward County Aviation Department is responsible for the maintenance and safety of the airport facility. The aircraft owner/operator is responsible for the maintenance of the aircraft,” a BCAD spokesperson said in an email, noting that the Florida Department of Transportation “conducts annual comprehensive safety inspections at HWO. For 25 consecutive years, HWO has received zero discrepancies or issues to correct from FDOT as part of this comprehensive annual review.”
Shepard that general aviation airports like North Perry have a much higher rate of accidents than commercial or military ones.
“For those of us who were military pilots, it is about six times higher, and in our commercial airline industry, planes coming out of MIA, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, it is about seven times higher,” he said.
He added, “There is nothing unusual this airport when compared to other airports of its type.”
Shepard said a few factors come into play.
“They don’t have the redundancy of equipment, electrical, hydraulic, all other types of technologies that are in commercial aircraft or a military fighter aircraft or transport,” he said. “Secondly, when you talk about the experience level of the pilots, the people here, many of them are learning how to fly, although generally very safely, but they don’t have the level of experience as a military pilot or a commercial airline pilot.”
Shepard also noted the different types of operations, including student training, transport training and banner planes.
General aviation, he said, is simply more accident-prone statistically.
“It is not to say it is not safe,” he said. “It is safer than being on the Palmetto (Expressway) or I-95, but still, it is a higher accident rate.”
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Broward County does not have the authority to unilaterally close the airport even if its officials wanted to.
An FAA spokesperson said the county “would have to submit a formal proposal justifying their request and demonstrating how the closure would benefit civil aviation.“
“The FAA would conduct a significant review and analysis of all aspects of the airport’s current and potential future use, including all of its federal obligations,” the spokesperson said.