He believes that development was kept at what officials considered a fairly safe distance from the riskiest areas north and south of the runway. “The homes where the plane crashed ,” Burton said, “have been there for over 30 years.” I tried to decide if it was easier to ride on the dirt road or on the railroad tracks to get there.” “I remember as a kid riding my bicycle over to that airport,” he said. He remembers that not much was near it in the 1960s and ’70s of his youth. New West Jordan Mayor Dirk Burton grew up in Kearns, just north of the airport that was built by the military during World War II and given to Salt Lake City on the condition that it always remain as an airport. “They were sited in undeveloped areas to avoid conflicts of any kind,” but development eventually surrounded them.

“That puts it in the company of hundreds, if not thousands, of other general aviation airports around the United States,” Wyatt told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t see any sign that suggests there’s something wrong about the airport, other than the fact that development has occurred around it,” said Bill Wyatt, executive director of the Salt Lake City Department of Airports, which operates the South Valley, Tooele and Salt Lake City International airports.Ĭhristopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune The latest crash and the history of plane accidents raise questions about how safe the areas surrounding the suburban airport are, and if something more should or could be done - especially because Salt Lake City International Airport is considering shifting more of its small-plane general aviation operations to South Valley and the Tooele Valley Airport. It also killed three people on the plane, injured three other passengers and damaged or destroyed three homes. The weekend crash was the first that killed someone on the ground - 72-year-old Maria Quintana, who was on her back deck when a plane slammed into her home. They went down in soccer fields, a few feet from an elementary school, on the New Bingham Highway - and, last Saturday, into houses. At least eight times in the past 10 years, aircraft crashed near the South Valley Regional Airport in West Jordan.

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