Editors, Vineyard Gazette;

The plane that crash landed this past Saturday at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport brought into sharp focus what a great group of professionals staff the airport. Because of their quick and effective response the pilot of that aircraft is alive.

The passenger who managed to land the plane did an amazing job under extremely stressful circumstances.

Once on the ground the on-duty airport operations group had to ensure that plane was safe to approach, extract the unresponsive pilot from it, which was very difficult in the confined space of the cockpit, and then allow the responding ambulance crew begin CPR.

Once the ambulance left for the hospital, this same group worked together to remove the disabled airplane safely and quickly so the airport’s main runway could be reopened for commercial traffic.

Most of the public who uses the airport see these people parking aircraft, fueling them and helping passengers and crew. What the public doesn’t see are the hours of training the airport employees spend preparing to deal with emergencies such as what occurred on Saturday. Unlike many airports that have dedicated staff for each function, it is important to point out that all the operations staff fulfill multiple functions including aircraft rescue and fire fighters.

The FAA inspects the airport annually and for the past seven years the airport has done an excellent job during these rigorous inspections. One of the parts of the inspection is to simulate a plane crash and time how fast the crew responds. Drills are one thing but a real emergency is when everyone is truly tested.

The Vineyard airport operations staff did a superb job on Saturday. Once the control tower sounded the alarm, the operations staff had to leave whatever duties they were performing, get to the airport fire station, don their gear, get in the fire trucks and race to the crash scene. This was all accomplished in under three minutes.

Getting the pilot quickly out of the plane was essential so that CPR could be started. The fact that the pilot is still alive is testament to how well they all did their jobs and worked together as a team.

A special thanks goes to the airport director, Geoff Freeman, who came up through the ranks and has made “safety first and foremost” the motto of all the employees.

Everyone on the Island should be proud we have such dedicated and consummately professionals working here. The Martha’s Vineyard Airport Commission thanks our employees for their good work.

— Martha’s Vineyard Airport commissioners Jack Ensor, Richard Knabel, Don Ogilvie, Bob Rosenbaum, Geoff Wheeler, Bob Zeltzer, Kristin Zern