Like most general aviation airports, Peter O. Knight does not have a control tower. That means the pilots who fly there, most of them in small recreational planes, must talk to each other to operate safely.
But unlike other general aviation airports, Peter O. Knight is surrounded by some of the most regulated airspace in Florida.
Seven miles to the northwest is Tampa International Airport. MacDill Air Force Base sits 6 miles to the southwest. Both are surrounded by airspace that pilots can enter only if they're granted permission by those airports' control towers. A shipping channel adjacent to the airport further complicates operations.
Most days, planes navigate the towerless airspace without problems. There are an estimated 60,000 takeoffs and landings at Peter O. Knight each year, and the overwhelming majority are incident-free.
But in the moments before the deadly crash on March 18, there was a communications failure between the two planes taking off at Peter O. Knight, a National Transportation Safety Board investigation has found. MacDill's controlled airspace factored in, too, the NTSB report says.
At least a dozen times in the past 10 years, those two issues have caused major accidents, near-misses and embarrassing but dangerous mishaps at the small airport, records show.