El Segundo Plans a Nasty Word or Two for Errant Pilots

El Segundo officials, fed up with noisy aircraft taking off from Los Angeles International Airport and flying over their city’s homes instead of the ocean, are preparing to send pilots a nasty message from the ground up.

One message being considered: “Turn at the Coastline, Stupid.”

The El Segundo City Council has voted to send a letter to the chief pilots of about 80 passenger airlines operating out of LAX. The letter’s message: Wait until you reach the coastline--as airport policy dictates--before turning inland.

But officials of the city of 15,000, which adjoins the airport, figured they should also give the pilots a little incentive to obey. So they ordered the city’s staff to include in the letter a threat to erect large signs on buildings--visible from the air--with not-so-subtle messages printed on them.

Besides the reference to the pilots’ IQ, another possible message being bandied about: “Most Careless Airline of the Month”--with the name of an airline following.

The specific wording will be voted on at the council’s next meeting July 5.

El Segundo Councilman Jim Clutter, who estimated that pilots make about 30 early turns each day over the city’s homes, rattling windows and drowning out conversations, believes such signs would achieve their intended effect.

“If I have a 12-foot sign that says, for example, ‘The Most Careless Airline of the Month Is United’, and I am sitting in a United flight, I don’t think that’s the type of thing the passengers or a chief pilot wants to see,” Clutter said Friday.

Airport officials concede that pilots are sometimes guilty of making early turns. They have tried a somewhat more polite sign approach themselves--placing large, lighted ones on the two runways used for takeoffs, reminding pilots: “After Takeoff No Turn Before Coastline.”

“Our primary impact is one of persuasion,” said Donald Miller, the Department of Airport’s deputy executive director.

Dick Russell, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the Airline Pilot’s Assn., said pilots make every attempt to avoid early turns and be good neighbors. If early turns do occur, he said, they are probably the result of a pilot attempting to avoid wind turbulence over the ocean. In other cases, winds cause an aircraft to “drift” slightly before it reaches the ocean, he said.

Russell, informed about El Segundo’s plan, did not seem amused.

“What they are doing is using a shotgun approach where maybe a rifle is more appropriate,” he said sternly.