The move comes more than one year after a pilot, Jemin Patel, was attempting to land at the Clearwater Airpark<\/a>\u00a0when he crashed into a nearby mobile home park, killing himself and two people on the ground. Crash reports and radio transmissions show that he couldn\u2019t see the airport and was trying to loop around when the plane engine failed.<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t think there was really an emphasis to have a rotating beacon at such a small general aviation airport,\u201d Hodgson explained. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t something that was really contemplated until unfortunate incidents within the last few years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pilot Bruce Brock has been renting a hangar at the Clearwater Airpark for the last 16 years. Now retired, he spent his career working in aviation as an Air Force pilot and then as a pilot at a major commercial airliner. Brock says even as a Pinellas County native, he too has trouble spotting the Clearwater Executive Airport at night.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt used to be the old joke\u2026 find the dark spot, and that\u2019s where the airport is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Brock has pushed for the last decade for the airport to get the safety mechanism. He says there\u2019s no downside to having the rotating beacon, as it only makes landings after dark safer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s here. I\u2019m happy it\u2019s here, and I\u2019m looking forward to it being in place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The City of Clearwater received an FDOT grant for $110,000 to pay for the cost of the beacon itself. The rest of the operational costs will be funded by the airport\u2019s operator, FlyUSA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEARWATER, FLA. \u2014 The Clearwater Executive Airport, formerly the Clearwater Airpark, will soon have a new piece of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[11687,1564,115,596,277,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,107,835],"class_list":["post-62660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-air-travel","tag-angie-angers","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-public-safety","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-travel","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}