The Annual Cold War With SNF Begins

By ANN Editor Pete Combs

"Well, Fred, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it."

That line from the Jay Ward cartoon, "Super Chicken," rings in my ears this week as the aviation community gears up for the Sun 'N Fun Fly-In at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport (FL). While a lot of us look forward to the event, I cringe. Because Jim Campbell, my publisher, is once again at war with Sun 'N Fun.

More appropriately, Sun 'N Fun is at war with Jim Campbell. He's received telephone calls from officers with the Lakeland Police Department warning him that if he tries to attend this year's show, he'll be arrested for trespassing (Note: at a public airport housing FAA facilities). He's been banned by the air show from attending the AOPA Pilot Town Meeting Thursday night. He can't go into the FAA building. The reason appears (and has been so stated) to be Jim's reporting on consumer and safety issues in a way that simply makes SNF look bad.

I first encountered the Lakeland Linder Cold War a couple of years ago, when I first signed on at Aero-News as a part-time writer/editor. I was, as is a reporter's nature, skeptical at first of claims from both sides on the reasons this conflict got started. So I concentrated on the facts. I also contemplated the responsibilities of a journalist and editor in a situation that has become adversarial, to say the least. Here's what I've come up with:

Safety IS An Issue

Arrival procedures are unclear and barely controlled. This appears to be the result of a formal agreement between the FAA and NATCA, the air traffic controllers' union. To confuse matters even more, SNF controller duty is highly sought among ATC-types. So instead of having the same controllers in the Lakeland Linder tower every year, the crew is constantly rotated. Last year, after months of investigation, Campbell wrote, "controllers are selected on organizational seniority criteria… even if they've never worked a VFR tower or have only been a radar person, etc., -- all they need are a CTO (Control Tower Operator's Certificate) and to be current (in a tower), with enough seniority to meet the union's negotiated contract articles. The result of all this is that the overall experience (SnF-wise) espoused by those working the towers is not what it could be…"

The result? Twenty-four accidents in 2002 alone -- one of them fatal.

Safety has been a big problem on the ground as well. Last year alone, two people were struck by taxiing aircraft. This, after warnings that attendees were being allowed too close to ground operations. That warning came from Aero-News and publisher Jim Campbell.

Honesty Is An Issue

Let's face up to a little secret within the airshow industry: most attendance figures are inflated. In most cases, this is certainly not a deliberate act of deception. As inaccurate as they are, these numbers still become the foundation upon which sponsorship rates are charged and, thus, have a remarkable effect on the amount of revenue generated by an air show.

But combine the inability to get an accurate gate count with the natural enthusiasm of an event staff and the numbers can be off by ten, 20 or even 30 percent. But in the case of Sun 'N Fun, local media report the count was off by several HUNDRED percent. The line of demarcation between optimism and cheating lies somewhere between a 30-percent exaggeration of the numbers and one that stretches to several times the actual attendance. This was pointed out in several articles that Jim wrote about SNF before the local media hopped on the story last year. As a result, it's apparent that the 640,000 attendees SNF has claimed in the past is actually more like 155,000.

Banning A Journalist Is Bad Business

But perhaps the most egregious error on the part of organizers Bill Eickoff and John Burton is the decision to ban Jim -- and Jim alone (though, other journalists have had serious problems with the event, as well) -- from the field during Sun 'N Fun. If I were the organizer of an air show and someone wrote bad things about my event, I'd make every possible effort to coopt that reporter, to address in a public way the concerns raised. Instead, SNF has buried their heads in the sand and Jim's point has been that people are being hurt and even killed as a result. SnF and company seem to have forgotten the line first made famous by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

If things at SNF really aren't as bad as Jim has reported in the past, then what does SNF have to fear by allowing Campbell access? As Jim has proven time and again over the years, banning him doesn't stop him from writing stories about SNF. He simply gathers the information by phone or by interviewing sources away from the venue. On the very face of it, the SNF "Ban Campbell" movement seems like an acrid mixture of fear and sour grapes.

I feel I know Jim Campbell. I believe he is a man of good intent whose reporting is accurate and verifiable. I also know him to be a stubborn guy, perhaps the most tenacious I've ever met. And you know what? In the journalism business, that's a good thing. Edward R. Morrow showed his tenacity in taking on Sen. Joe McCarthy. Woodward and Bernstein showed it in reporting on Watergate. Jim Campbell has shown it in reporting on Sun 'N Fun.

So if SNF has nothing to hide, I say ban the ban. Let the gates swing wide and allow Jim passage because, in the reporter business, truth is always a defense. Free Jim Campbell.

FMI: www.sun-n-fun.org, www.aero-news.net