Good News at the Airport

Not all the news coming out of Orange County’s John Wayne Airport is bad. Technology and competition have combined in recent days to bring about what promises to be pluses for the flying public and residents around the airport in coming months--lower fares and lower noise levels.

The lower fares will come April 1, when three new airlines--Continental, America West and Jet America--begin service out of John Wayne. All are so-called discount carriers that will be offering lower fares to destinations such as Phoenix, Houston, Dallas and Chicago than existing carriers now charge.

Without the new competition, the present carriers have not been offering passengers at John Wayne the same lower fares that they have offered at other airports, because they have not had to. In several weeks, however, the lower fares will come to John Wayne with the new carriers and new competition, and that’s good news for travelers.

The good news for residents below the flight patterns was the results of last Thursday’sflight-noise test for the Bae-146, the British jet used by PSA. Noise experts were stunned when the plane registered fewer than 86 decibels on noise monitors--much lower than anyone had anticipated.

The lower readings mean that the county must somehow reconsider the new regulations that it adopted last month to limit the total number of airline flights, because the regulations apply only to jets that measure more than 86 decibels on takeoff. County officials, when they drafted the regulations, didn’t think that technology existed to allow lower noise readings for passenger jets. The Bae-146 proved otherwise.

What’s exciting, however, is that such an aircraft does exist and will be flying out of John Wayne. The lower readings mean that the Bae-146 will cut the noise of departing jet aircraft in half, making the disturbance factor of jet planes flying overhead in Newport Beach no more than that of a passing auto on the street, according to noise experts. That and the lower fares are the best news to come out of John Wayne Airport in a jet age.