One February evening two years ago, Jemin Patel approached the Clearwater Airpark in his Beechcraft Bonanza V35B and found himself in a situation that other pilots say is common. He couldn’t find the runway.
The airport off Hercules Avenue had a reputation for being unusually dark and hard to find in a sea of city lights, even for pilots who had landed there before. Patel, of Brevard County, was trying to land there for the first time.
He almost made it, passing parallel to the airpark’s runway in his single-engine plane. Under different circumstances, he might have been able to try again or land at a different nearby airport. Inconvenienced, but alive…