Airport Plans Tests of Jetliner Noise as Complaints in Tustin Grow Louder

The latest battle in the continuing noise war between John Wayne Airport and its neighbors is being fought in Tustin.

Increased numbers of noisy jetliners bound for the busy Orange County airport have been descending over the central county city, provoking rising levels of complaints from residents and city officials. So great has the clamor become that airport officials will soon begin a series of tests to measure the aircraft noise.

The problem started about a year ago when the Federal Aviation Administration, citing interference from a recently constructed building in Santa Ana, shut down a navigational transmitter at the airport. That forced air traffic controllers to reroute more traffic along another approach that passes over Tustin.

“There were so many airplanes over here within a 15-minute period that you wouldn’t believe it,” said Ginny Flaherty, owner of Ginny’s Antiques, which is in the city’s Old Town section. “If it’s a warm day and you have your windows open, you literally have to stop your conversation until whatever it is gets over.”

City Councilman John Kelly said: “Our goal is just to try to get the planes to stop flying over the residential areas in Tustin.

“It’s like World War II, the bombers coming over. . . . It’s like a war zone. This City Council’s got to do everything it . . . can to eliminate this nuisance.”

At least one other council member also described the city’s relations with the airport in military terms.

Mayor Pro Tempore Ursula E. Kennedy, a 10-year council veteran, described present dealings with John Wayne as, at best, “peaceful coexistence.” She said she recognizes that “my citizens (Tustin residents) use the airport, too,” and that the city does benefit from the commerce generated by the airport.

Still, the airport has grown significantly in the 20 years that she has lived in the community. Airport officials in the 1960s “said it would never happen, but now we’re seeing a million passengers a year” coming through the Orange County airport, Kennedy said.

Although Kelly expressed fear that controllers would reroute flights away from the current approach “just on a short-term basis to get past this testing,” he and Flaherty see the tests as an important first step toward solving the problem.

“I think it’s absolutely necessary,” Flaherty said. “How else are you going to find out?”

Tustin Community Development Director Christine Shingleton said: “It did appear that we had a dramatic increase in the number of complaints.

“It reached a threshold when, at that point in time, people were saying that maybe we ought to take a serious interest in this.”

Shingleton said most of the complaints came from the area north of the Santa Ana Freeway and west of Newport Avenue, which includes the Old Town section.

Acknowledging that “something must be going on,” Karen Robertson, the airport’s access/noise officer, said testing will begin once the airport receives all of about $80,000 in noise-monitoring devices purchased for the test.

“It’s not a complete system yet,” Robertson said. “We’re still waiting for another eight or nine items. As soon as we have all the equipment, we’re going to go ahead and hire people to sit with the monitors, and then we’ll start monitoring.”

Robertson said paying for the equipment was “better than entering litigation” over the noise. The city had not formally threatened litigation over the matter, she said, adding that testing would minimize the chances that it could happen.

The airport has had to deal with its share of litigation over airplane noise. In December, 1985, the county signed an agreement with Newport Beach that placed a cap on the number of average daily flights and ended years of legal battles over plans to expand the airport. In March, 1986, the airport began a program of soundproofing houses at the southern end of the airfield in Santa Ana Heights to address noise complaints from that community.

In Tustin, Robertson said tests will include noise checks inside and outside homes from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. each day. She added that the airport currently did not have enough equipment to do that.

The problem that led to the testing plan began early last year, when the former approach path to John Wayne Airport--which angled planes along an eastern route over Villa Park--was shut down because of interference with an airport navigational device.

The device, a VOR (very high frequency omnidirectional range) transmitter, normally sends out beams in a 360-degree pattern, much like spokes emanating from the hub of a bicycle wheel, according to Alan Murphy, chief of special projects at the airport. Pilots utilize those beams to guide them into the airport.

Last January, the FAA shut down the VOR after concluding that a 10-story building under construction at Santa Ana’s Hutton Center was interfering with the transmitter beam, causing it to send false signals. Airport traffic was then diverted to another approach pattern that uses an Instrument Landing System (ILS), a more sophisticated form of transmitter. That route passes over Tustin.

Almost immediately there were complaints from residents about noise levels going up. The Tustin City Council then hired a professional acoustical engineer, John Van Houten of Anaheim-based J.J. Houten and Associates, to monitor the airport tests for the city. Last November, Van Houten drew up a plan for testing and sent it to the airport. “It was merely a suggestion as to how such a plan might be put together,” Van Houten said. “We never wanted to be in the position of detailing the program to the airport.”

Robertson said she has devised a plan that was “essentially identical” to Van Houten’s.

“We’ll have somebody out there with the monitor taking down the aircraft type so we can correlate the type of aircraft with the level of noise,” Robertson said. “Once we evaluate the extra noise levels we’re going to see if we can find any patterns,” she said.

Asked what the airport would do if the noise levels were discovered to be above the legal limit, Robertson said: “We don’t have any preset solutions. . . . We’re just going to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Councilwoman Kennedy said she hoped city officials would be able to reach a compromise with the airport after the tests and the consultant’s study are completed. But she would not rule out legal action to seek lower noise levels.

“We are very cautious people and very conservative people,” Kennedy said. “But we have to survive.”

Changes in the types of transmitters used for John Wayne Airport may yet offer some relief, airport officials said.

After being out of commission for the first half of last year, the VOR approach became partially functional in July when the airport installed a Non-Directional Beacon, a less sophisticated form of transmitter, according to the airport’s Murphy. But pilots still tended to favor the more precise ILS approach--the route over Tustin.

Airport officials continue to look for a more permanent way to “recreate the VOR approach,” Murphy said, adding that only about 10% of the VOR’s 360-degree range was utilized along that approach. Such a sector could be covered just as effectively by a device called a Localizer Directional Antenna (LDA), which emits a single signal for pilots to follow to the airport, he said.

Officials hope to have such an antenna installed by fall, he said.

Times staff writer Jess Bravin contributed to this story.