Will Seaplanes Get Crowded Out? Recent Close Call Prompts Demand For Regulation

A young swimmer’s brush with a seaplane has his parents calling for restrictions on using busy Lake Coeur d’Alene as a runway.

Patrick Libey, 13, and a friend were snorkeling July 27 when Patrick felt something hit him, knocking him down 10 feet to the lake bottom, he said.

“I didn’t think it was a boat, because I would have been chopped up,” Patrick said Friday. “I looked up at the plane and thought, `That couldn’t have just hit me.”’

But Patrick’s friend and other witnesses said he was hit by a plane - a Brooks Seaplane Service craft - returning from another scenic tour around the lake.

“Somebody is going to get killed,” said Patrick’s father, Colfax attorney Gary Libey. “The problem with the seaplane is it’s just too crowded to have planes landing and taking off.”

Bill Brooks, the 74-year-old pilot and business owner, says Patrick is mistaken.

“We never land over there,” Brooks said from City Dock Friday, gesturing toward the swimming area off City Beach where the boy claims he was swimming. “We always land out in the middle of the lake.”

Witness accounts conflict. Some say the plane touched down near the two boys who were swimming inside the boat buoys, which mark a 500-foot no-wake zone from the shoreline. Others say the boys were beyond the buoys.

“We were going to catch some fish with a net,” Patrick explained. “Every once in a while, we’d look up to see where the buoys were.”

The pontoon grazed Patrick, leaving paint on his mask, he said. He suffered a bump to the head and long scratches on his shoulder.

“I was in shock. I was freaked out,” he said. “We slowly swam back in with his arm around me.”

His friend’s mother, Tess Clowe, took Patrick to the North Idaho Immediate Care Center, then she, Patrick and her son filed an accident report with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department.

A week after the accident, the investigation is closed.

“According to the evidence they (sheriff’s deputies) have gathered, the seaplane was well outside the swimming area,” said Sgt. Jeff Thomas.

But the only statements in the investigative documents are from Brooks, Patrick and the Clowes. Brooks claims he landed 900 to 1,000 feet from the shoreline, well outside the swimming area.

Thomas said he did not know why the deputies did not document other statements from witnesses who say the boys were outside the boat buoys.

One witness listed in the report, Doris Milner, said sheriff’s deputies never asked her about what she saw. Milner was visiting from Florida and watched the plane land from her blanket on the beach.

“We noticed that the planes were coming and landing near us. One came in and landed a little ways away,” she said. “The next one came in and landed almost in front of us. I said to myself, `That might hit some of those children in there.”’

Lifeguards at City Beach said Friday that they have never seen the Brooks seaplanes land inside the boat buoys, which is considered a swimming area though it is not all roped off.

“They’re not stupid pilots,” said one lifeguard, who would not give his name.

Brooks suggested the culprit who struck Patrick might have been the pilot of an ultralight with another scenic flight business, “Sky High.” But Michael Green, who books flights for the ultralight plane, said the plane was in the hangar on July 27.

Whether the boys were inside or outside the buoys is not as important to Patrick’s parents as simply making the lake safer for swimmers and others, they said.

His father is seeking criminal charges against Brooks, and has contacted the Federal Aviation Administration in an effort to have Brooks’ landing privileges revoked. Patrick’s mother, on the other hand, would like to see a designated landing strip marked on the lake to prevent accidents, or better markings for the swimming area.

The FAA sent an investigator to look into the incident. Results of that investigation were not available Friday.