Expansion Will Bring Big Changes to ‘Country Airport in Middle of the City’ : Whiteman Comes of Age

On occasional weekends, Len Holden and his buddies at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima pull their lawn chairs out to the edge of the taxiway, where they sit and watch the parade of small planes flying in and out.

As the Cessnas, the Pipers and the Beechcraft airplanes come in for their landings--some smooth, some bumpy--Holden and his pals hold up large, numbered cards, rating the final approaches and touchdowns on a scale of 1 to 10.

“We get guys going around the pattern again to try and get a better score,” Holden laughed. “This airport’s an easygoing place. On a hot afternoon the runway might as well be Zuma Beach. We all take off our shirts and sit and watch the wave of planes.”

Whiteman Airport--where pilots drive their cars right onto the taxiway and park next to their planes, and where pilots commonly throw impromptu barbecues and parties outside hangars--is, as one airport official put it, “the peaceful little country airport in the middle of the city.”

Dramatic Change

But not for long. A number of proposals and projects are impending that will dramatically change the face of the 168-acre airport alongside San Fernando Road, turning it into the largest of the five Los Angeles County-owned airports.

Plans include the construction of an air traffic control tower, reconstruction of the runway to handle more traffic and doubling the number of tie-down and hangar spaces.

While many airport users cringe at the looming airport expansion and the resulting restrictions it will place on them, especially on the ground, they said they are determined to retain the airport’s friendly, casual atmosphere.

“I look at it this way: the more the merrier,” said Louis A. Stearns, head of the loose-knit Whiteman Airport Pilot’s Assn. As long as pilots are still free to work on their planes and will “not be chased down” by security guards, Stearns said, the pending expansion will be welcomed because of the increased airport services it will bring with it.

At the forefront of airport development is a proposal to build an air traffic control tower. Currently Whiteman is an uncontrolled airport, where pilots determine by sight when it is safe to take off and land without the aid of radio contact with a controller.

Plans for Control Tower

Officials at the Western-Pacific Regional Office of the Federal Aviation Administration said last week they will proceed with a formal request for federal funding to build a $1.2-million air traffic control tower at Whiteman.

The funding request, which will be sent to FAA headquarters in Washington in about two weeks, will seek money in the 1988-89 fiscal year, said Elly Brekke, spokeswoman for the Western-Pacific FAA office.

Brekke said FAA officials in Washington will decide how the Whiteman tower request ranks among other projects throughout the country.

“It’s hard to say if the tower will get a high or low priority,” Brekke said.

The request for a tower comes amid rising concern for air safety at the airport, primarily because of Whiteman’s proximity to busy Burbank Airport. The southern end of the Whiteman runway is 3.8 miles away from the northern tip of Burbank’s busiest runway, leading officials and air traffic experts to warn that the congested skies might invite a catastrophe. In December, for example, the pilot of a DC-9 jetliner mistook the tiny Whiteman runway for Burbank and came within a few hundred feet of landing there. A Burbank controller notified the pilot of the potentially disastrous error.

Jets vs. Prop Planes

Exacerbating the air traffic congestion above Whiteman are commercial jets approaching Burbank directly over Whiteman’s airspace as low as 3,000 feet. The smaller Whiteman-bound planes fly beneath them at 2,000 feet. Often, the private planes and passenger jets pass within 1,000 feet of each other.

In a letter to the FAA, U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) stated that such air traffic conditions demand and justify the construction of a Whiteman control tower.

In December, FAA officials had stated that Whiteman was not busy enough to warrant a tower, falling about 50,000 short in annual take-offs and landings needed to establish a tower. FAA guidelines set the need at 200,000 a year.

But after repeated requests to the U.S. Department of Transportation from local politicians, including Berman and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the FAA was ordered to reconsider the need for a tower.

Whiteman pilots generally favor the installation of a tower, although many said they will lament the loss of freedom to take off and land independent of instruction. Also, a small number of pilots who do not have radios in their planes grumble about having to purchase costly equipment.

“Anything that makes it safer to fly is a good thing,” said private pilot Mike Looges. “But it’s kind of sad when another small airfield gets controlled.”

What concerns airport users most is not the air restrictions that tower will bring but restrictions on the airport grounds. Pilots at Whiteman airport, like those at most other small fields, resemble a fraternity of sorts, bonded by their interest in aviation.

A Place to Play

“If we can’t play at the airport, what’s the fun?” said Stearns. “The first thing that’s going to happen with a tower is that they are going to want to throw a fence around the airport and tell us where we can or can’t go. As long as we can walk around and talk and we are left alone with our planes it will be fine.”

Airport manager John Lounsbery said he expects the tower, if approved--along with other development plans--to meet the growing demand for services at the airport.

Last year, officials spent $1.1 million in county and federal funds to pave a 26-acre dirt field on the airport property and to construct 207 hangars. Previously there had only been 16. The hangars, which are rented out to pilots by the county for $200 to $360 a month, were immediately filled and there is now a waiting list of a year or longer.

In addition, all but 92 of the airport’s 479 tie-down spaces, which cost $65 and $110 a month, are filled. There are six small flight schools and aircraft rental centers at the airport and one airplane mechanic center.

The additional planes gave Whiteman the most aircraft housed at a county airport. El Monte is second among the five county airfields with 530 spaces.

The increase in hangar and tie-down slots also resulted in a 53% increase in the number of take-offs and landings, called “airport operations,” over a three-year period. In 1986, there were 153,788 operations, compared to 100,757 operations in 1983.

Airport revenue has also steadily risen--from $927,000 in 1983 to $1.3 million in 1985. Airport officials said 1983 was a turning point for Whiteman because the closure of nearby San Fernando Airport brought an additional 150 more planes to the field. About 90% of the revenue is garnered through the lucrative leases of hangar and tie-down space, Lounsbery said.

Within the next year, a federally funded runway improvement project will increase the number of take-offs and landings the runway can safely accommodate.

Change to Ease Turns

The project will entail paving over the grassy areas that currently separate the runway from the taxiway. That will enable pilots landing their aircraft to turn more quickly off a runway onto a taxiway, where they will be out of the way of approaching planes.

Also, the county will be installing 57 more hangar spots this year.

The long-range master plan for the airport includes the leveling of a hillside to build a new entrance road, the construction of a new administration office, a pilot service building, and a restaurant. Eventually the airport will be home to 1,200 small airplanes, double the current number.

“In 10 years or more, you’ll hardly recognize the place,” Lounsbery said.

But plans for new roads and offices seem a little highfalutin’ now for Whiteman Airport, where two adopted airport dogs sleep on a grassy area in front of Lounsbery’s office and the flight schools and rental center are based in portable trailers.

Most of the pilots still call the airport Whiteman Air Park, a name that has stuck since the 1950s when former property owner Marvin Whiteman had grand plans to turn the area into a regional recreation center with a race-car track, airstrip, swimming pool and skeet range. The county purchased the land in 1970 to use solely as an airport.

Petunias Among Propellers

This is an airport where a pilot’s wife, who grew weary of watching her husband work on his plane, recently planted petunias and pansies in a dirt path along a row of hangars.

While about half of the planes housed at Whiteman belong to businessmen, at the heart of the airport are about 200 avid recreational pilots, many of whom tenderly care for their home-built planes in hangars decorated with aviation memorabilia.

Unlike Burbank airport, with its commercial airline flights, and Van Nuys Airport, which deals with predominantly corporate and business-aviation interests, Whiteman is accessible to private pilots.

“We get a lot of pleasure just sitting out here, talking,” Stearns said. “At bigger airports you just take off and land.”

Chuck Alley, who first started flying out of Whiteman in 1952, describes himself as “a little guy” and said he fits comfortably into the Whiteman mold because “I don’t like to associate with the corporate jet types.”

Whiteman is the only airport in the Los Angeles area where affordable hangar space is available for his three small planes, Alley said. For about $300 a month he can house his planes at Whiteman instead of Van Nuys, for example, where hangar space would cost him at least $125 more a month.

Janson’s Gang

Perhaps one of the best known pilots is 72-year-old Don Janson, a retired sheet-metal worker who has kept his Smith Mini Plane at Whiteman since 1963. Janson and the candy-apple red plane he built himself have made a name for themselves by entering in air races throughout the country.

Many of the pilots who rent hangar spaces near Janson’s wear T-shirts imprinted with “Squeaky’s Squadron,” in honor of Janson’s unusual voice. “I guess my voice started to change at 17, but never quite made it,” he said.

The reason he likes Whiteman: “Who wants to be around a bunch of snooty executives with their fancy two-engine planes and all the money in the world? What fun is that? Out here, it’s friendly.”