Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
CITED FOR DROPPING IN
A Coral Springs pilot landed a helicopter in friend’s backyard for a birthday party but stirred up more than he bargained for
CORAL SPRINGS – Talk about out of the blue.
He wanted to surprise a friend on her 45th birthday by dropping in on her house party — in a helicopter.
But the surprise was even bigger for neighbors, who reacted by calling the cops.
Kfir “Leo” Baranes thought the single mom’s two children would get a kick out of it, so he piloted a Robinson R44 Raven II into her backyard on a Saturday
in June along with two passengers. He planned to take the birthday girl for a ride as a surprise.
When the cops showed up, they called the fire department to shut down the street. Now, prosecutors want to fine him $500 for violating a city code that prevents people from taking off or landing aircraft outside of an airport or heliport.
Bur Baranes is fighting the citation and is scheduled for a non-jury trial in September.
“It’s not about the money,” he said. “It’s about the principle.”
City Attorney J.J. Hearn said the restrictions protect the public and declined to comment amid the pending litigation.
Baranes’ argument is that the city’s Chevy Chase neighborhood isn’t on the Federal Aviation Administration’s map of restricted airspace. And so because he has a license, he ought to be able to come and go as he pleases.
“It has to be on the map,” he said of restricted space. “How am I supposed to know a certain area is restricted?
“It’s private property. Why should the city prevent that?”
Baranes might have a point.
Pilots are expected to maintain a reasonable, safe distance from buildings,
trees and power lines, said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. But the federal government has allowed previous helicopter landings.
For example, the FAA found a Central Florida father didn’t violate regulations in 2009 when he safely flew his 14-year-old son to his first day of classes at East Ridge High School in Clermont.
The only restricted
airspace in South Florida is over Palm Beach when the president is in town, she said.
“There is no FAA regulation that would prohibit the landing, if the pilot had the approval of the property owner and it was a safe operation,” Bergen said.
But Bergen said the state’s Department of Transportation has its own rules. “The pilot would have to have FDOT approval to land a helicopter at an
unapproved heliport,” she said.
Baranes disagrees. In 2018, he received a letter from the state’s Department of Transportation that demanded he not take off in a helicopter from his home without the proper license for a private heliport. He argued with them he hadn’t broken any rules — and said he didn’t hear from them again.
An FDOT spokesman declined to comment.
Baranes and his aircraft have drawn government scrutiny a few times before. And each time he won.
The FAA came after him last year, threatening to suspend his pilot’s license if he didn’t take a recertification exam. The request came after he made a precautionary landing in July at a Jupiter airport because his fuel indicator light had gone off.
The FAA said he ran out of fuel almost seven miles from his destination. Baranes disputed that, saying he had enough fuel to fly
and the indicator light could have been a sign of a different problem. An administrative judge for the National Transportation Safety Board ruled in his favor in January, according to records, saying attorneys for the FAA had not proved their case questioning his qualifications to fly.
And in 2015, Baranes was cited by Palm Beach County for painting the phone number for his business on a T-39 Sabreliner 1973 plane he kept in his backyard, The Palm Beach Post reported.
And that was after many months of back-and-forth with county officials, who initially told him it wasn’t possible to keep it on his 3.5-acre property. “You can’t tell me ‘no.’ You can tell me ‘how,’ ” Baranes, an Israeli immigrant, said. “This is the land of the free. This is why I left Israel, because I believe in the Constitution.”
He had rescued the military aircraft from a Broward County scrapyard
in 2013 and restored it to keep as a “cave” for his young children to play at their home in suburban Palm Beach County, just outside Greenacres.
In that case, he got to keep his plane and painted over the phone number of his company that performs commercial and residential restorations after disasters.
But in the Coral Springs case, he said he doesn’t feel he’s in the wrong and won’t budge. He argued the government is exerting muscle when it shouldn’t.
He said a Coral Springs police officer kept him outside for several hours, then the fire department shut down the street so he could leave. He said he wanted to make an appearance at the birthday party only to say hello and goodbye “for one minute,” although he came back later in his car.
“I’m a freedom fighter,” he said. “Thank God we don’t live in Iran or Russia. We live in the United States.”