First, I'm glad I'm not the only one who was rubbed the wrong way by that melodramatic woman in the car, playing the victim in the interview and the recording.
Second, distance from the road to the numbers is ~466 ft. Assuming a generously flat ~3.8 degree glideslope, 466*tan(3.8) = 31 ft. Drop this to a 3 degree glideslope and you get 24 ft over the road. (Edit: Airnav says the VASI is a 4.5 degree glidepath, so 466*tan(4.5) = 36 ft. Not much of a difference.)
As a private pilot, it's a no brainer... use short/soft over a 50 ft obstacle landing technique, come in at a steeper angle than a standard 3 degree glideslope with full flaps and it's all good. But remembering back to being a student pilot on my first solo, while I knew what a displaced threshold was and to try and land past it on the numbers, I certainly hadn't seen short/soft field technique over obstacles yet. From the video he definitely let the airplane get low and behind the power curve, but hey... he was only 30 ft too low...
Realistically this is a calculated risk with flight training anywhere, but I wonder if there are some instructional attitudes at this particular airport that are partly to blame (i.e. ignoring the VASI, or getting as low as you want over the displaced threshold and stretching the glide to the numbers). Since there's no permanent obstacle at the end of the runway (just cars which may or may not be there), the fact that student pilots should be flying every approach over that imaginary obstacle may be getting lost in translation.
But like
TFaudree_ERAU, I don't see anything really dangerous about this airport compared to others. During my training my CFI took me into an airport in the wine country of Sonoma, CA called
Sonoma Skypark (0Q9). The runway is 2480 ft x 40 ft, has 15 ft trees at the approach end (to runway 26) with a 237 ft displaced threshold, and 60 ft trees at the departure end. My instructor used to work at this airport and soloed plenty of students from it.
(In this pic it looks like some of the departure end trees were removed. Last time I was there, there were more!
)
(Edit:
BEEF SUPREME might recognize this field too haha.)
Another similar airport up in northern CA is
Lakeport-Lampson (1O2), which has a county highway with frequent semi truck traffic less than 400 ft from the numbers. It also gets extra cool points for having a freakin mountain at the departure end of the runway. This was one of my first solo cross country destinations as a student pilot, and needless to say the mountain looked more intimidating in person than it did on the sectional.
Check out the white and red markings prior to the chevrons saying "Look out! This is a highway!"
