By Phil Riske, managing editor | Rose Law Group Reporter
One of my assignments as a journalist in the 90s took me on numerous occasions to Eloy, Ariz. Based at the Eloy Airport at the time was a skydiving team known as “Arizona Airspeed.” The airport, in fact, is one of the leading skydive bases in the country and has hosted national and world championships that bring thousands of fans and tourists to the area south of Casa Grande.
To know professional skydivers who compete by executing required formations is to know an eclectic group of men and women who train rigorously and jump from airplanes from 13,000 feet with no fear. Yes, there have been injuries and fatalities at Eloy and elsewhere in the sport, but the numbers are few.
I recently finished a book written by the captain of Arizona Airspeed, with whom I became good friends. In “Above All Else,” Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld describes his near-death experience.
In 1992, he was in a plane crash that killed many of his friends and left him with life-threatening injuries and in a coma for six weeks. When he regained consciousness, with his broken neck caged in a halo brace, he planned and then executed the most astounding comeback with his team. Told at one point by doctors that he would never skydive again, “Dan B.C.” is now a six-time world champion, and coaches teams around the world.
Dan took me to the crash site at Perris Valley, Calif., just outside Riverside. He told me that when he was in a coma, a teammate who died in the crash told him to continue skydiving competition.
That he did.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) recent decision to close four airport control towers in Arizona might have prodded the City of Eloy to put management of the Eloy Municipal Airport on a high priority track.
The FAA funds 91 percent of all airport improvements, and if the Eloy Airport does not meet its obligations under FAA guidelines, that funding could go to another, more “worthy” airport.
That would be a devastating blow to the skydiving school and competition at the airport.
I’d suggest the city hire Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld to lobby the FAA to continue funding of the Eloy Municipal Airport.
