Plaridel Airport closed

The Air Transportation Office (ATO) yesterday ordered the temporary closure of the Plaridel Airport in Bulacan, pending investigation of the mid-air collision of two light aircrafts last Sunday.

Cessna airplanes belonging to flight schools WCC Aviation Company and Fliteline Aviation have also been grounded. 

ATO chief Nilo Jatico said officials and training pilots will be summoned to shed light into the incident, which claimed the life of a pilot and two students.

The casualties have been identified as Patrick Philip Teruel, a flight instructor of Phoenix School of Aviation, and student pilots Reena Salve, 25, and Varsha Gopinanth, an Indian national.

“I have ordered  the closure of the Plaridel Airport until further notice,” Jatico told The STAR in an interview. He said flight training exercises in the airstrip will not be allowed for the time being.

The ATO is spearheading an investigation into the incident to determine if there was pilot error or tower error involved.

The Cessna planes collided in mid-air at an altitude of about 400 to 500 feet after one of the planes took off from Runway 35, while the other was cleared for landing in the same runway.

Capt. Rodrigo Grant, of the Phoenix Aviation School based in Plaridel town, told The STAR that Teruel was an instructor of the WCC Aviation School also based in Plaridel town.

Gopinanth was Teruel’s student, while Reena Salve, a student pilot who was flying the other Cessna-150, was one of Grant’s students at the Phoenix Aviation School.

He described Salve as a good  student who had accumulated more than 90 flying hours and had flown to as far as Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan and San Fernando City in La Union.

When asked  why aviation schools in Plaridel town seemed to have attracted international student pilots, Grant said  local aviation schools offer  better training at lower cost.

“There has been a boom in the aviation industry since last year and there was pilot shortage,” he said.

This led Indian nationals and some Nepalese to chose aviation schools in Plaridel town, which have been training student pilots from different government agencies like the Philippine National Police, the Navy and the Army.

Grant said training courses offered by local aviation schools are shorter and more intensive compared to trainings offered in India and Nepal.

“Besides, we have more equipment than they have,” he said.

He added that the Phoenix Aviation School   has six available training planes, while six more are coming from abroad.

With regards to Sunday’s crash, Grant said the aircraft and the students are covered by insurance, but he cannot say if the owner and farmer of the riceland where the planes crashed will be indemnified.

Santos Domingo, the tenant of the half hectare riceland where the planes crashed, told The STAR that aviation fuel may leave his land unproductive.

“I wish they can give me  assistance for the damage,” he said in Filipino.

Domingo was at home nursing a wounded foot when the plane crashed around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.  – With Dino Balabo