Anti-Noise Plan OKd for San Diego Airport : Airlines Warn of Flight Cutbacks Under Tough Rules to Keep Older Jets Out of Lindbergh Field
Despite threats by the airlines to cancel flights, the Board of Port Commissioners Tuesday unanimously approved a mandatory plan to drastically reduce within the next several years the number of noisy jets operating at Lindbergh Field.
The goal of the plan, which goes into effect Jan. 1, is to force the airlines to convert all of their operations at the downtown airport to newer, quieter Stage III jets by 1999. The plan includes fines of $1,000 to $5,000 per flight on airlines that violate the schedule and use too many noisy, Stage II aircraft.
The new plan caps years of controversy about the noise that has pitted numerous homeowners in affluent Point Loma area against airlines and the San Diego Unified Port District. Two years ago, lawsuits were filed by more than 1,200 homeowners who claimed that the noise had devalued their property. The suits are still pending in federal court.
‘Good, Solid, Fair’
“It’s a good, solid, fair program,” Nancy Palmtag, a Loma Portal resident who has been an outspoken critic of airport noise, said after Tuesday’s vote. “It will bring limited noise relief to the community while not causing an undue burden on the airlines.”
But airline representatives argued otherwise during Tuesday’s Port District meeting, and they repeatedly predicted dire economic consequences in San Diego, including the cancellation of some flights.
“The simple fact is that United cannot comply with the proposed regulation effective Jan. 1, 1989, with our existing fleet mix and schedule pattern,” said Alan B. Wayne, United Airlines’ regional director for public affairs.
“Thus, the immediate practical effect of the regulation could be a curtailment of service by United in and out of San Diego . . . a level of service that ranks San Diego as United’s 13th largest city in enplanements out of 155 cities served worldwide,” he said.
J. Richard Hannan, spokesman for the Air Transport Assn. of America, a consortium of airlines, added: “At this point, we can state categorically . . . that the regulation will ultimately mean lost jobs and economic opportunity for the region.”
Hannan said the airlines opposed to the plan included American, Alaska, Braniff, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Pan American, Piedmont, Trans World, United, USAir and Southwest, and the Federal Express and Flying Tigers cargo lines.
Year of Negotiations
The plan approved Tuesday culminates a year of closed-door negotiations between the Port District, which owns and operates the airport, and a coalition of Lindbergh Field-area neighborhood and business groups.
The unprecedented negotiations began in earnest after the coalition--including the Marine Corps and Navy, which operate training bases adjacent to Lindbergh--intervened in state proceedings late last year to determine whether the airport should receive a variance from California Department of Transportation noise standards.
The result was a nine-point plan aimed at easing the noise burden around Lindbergh by phasing in the Stage III aircraft--which are about 12 times quieter than their predecessors. Stage II aircraft include the Boeing 727 and 737, and the McDonnell Douglas DC-9. Stage III planes are the latest generation of jets, including the Boeing 747, 757 and 767; the Lockheed L-1011; McDonnell Douglas’ MD-80 series and DC-10, and the British-made BAe 146.
Key provisions of the plan include:
- Requiring airlines to increase all Stage III operations to 75% by 1993 and 100% by 1999.
As a beginning, the Port District will require each airline over the next two years to make sure that its percentage of Stage III operations at Lindbergh will be 10% greater than its nationwide average. Thus, under this pro rata formula, an air carrier that uses its quieter jets for 25% of its nationwide operations, will have to do so for 35% of its landings and take-offs at Lindbergh.
The pro rata formula was criticized by several airline representatives, including Barry Slakman, Delta’s chief performance engineer.
Slakman said that though his company has 38% Stage III aircraft in its nationwide fleet, only 20% of its operations at Lindbergh use the quieter planes. The San Diego formula requires the airline to immediately increase that mix to 48% at Lindbergh, a move he branded as “discriminatory” to other airports throughout the country.
- Tightening Lindbergh’s flight curfew.
Currently, the noisier Stage II jets are restricted from taking off after 10 p.m.; Stage IIIs are allowed to take off until 11:30 p.m. All aircraft are allowed to take off starting at 6:30 a.m.
The change will make Stage II aircraft wait until 7 a.m. to depart. And it will cut nighttime curfew violations by approving take-offs for planes that leave the gate no less than 15 minutes before the curfew.
The curfew changes will go into effect April 1.
- Instituting a pilot program to soundproof one of the 10 public schools in the Lindbergh flight path. The most likely candidates are Point Loma High School or Loma Portal Elementary.
- Slapping a ban on full-throttle tests conducted by airlines during the nighttime curfew. The tests have been used to check engine repairs. The plan allows idling only to clear water out of the jet engines after a plane has been washed.
Airline representatives on Tuesday urged the port not to approve the program, saying that the companies had inadequate notice about the changes. Hannan, of the ATA, said he didn’t receive the final proposal, as contained in a Port District study, until Nov. 18.
‘Unreasonably Fast Track’
“With all due respect, we believe that common sense, no less than procedural due process and simple fairness, is surely offended by this unreasonably fast track,” Hannan said.
But Michael Gatzke, an attorney hired by the Port District for airport matters, told commissioners Tuesday that the airlines’ complaints were “unseemly.”
Gatzke said that the ATA was informed in July about the plan, and that the airline group refused a request from the Port District and intervenors in August for information about the percentages of Stage III aircraft used by its members nationwide.
Gatzke also told commissioners that though individual airlines may curtail service to San Diego in reaction to the plan, the schedule to phase in the Stage III aircraft was designed so as not to endanger the level of commercial air service to Lindbergh.
He agreed, however, that cargo lines such as Fighting Tigers and Federal Express may have a problem with the new schedule because all of the planes they fly are the noisier Stage II planes. At his suggestion, the commissioners voted to give the cargo companies a six-month exemption so the problem could be studied.
Commissioners also asked Gatzke and Port District staffers to study what effect the noise-reduction plan will have on United, which uses Lindbergh to perform routine line maintenance on its nationwide fleet of Boeing 727s, the most common of the noisier Stage II aircraft. The airline said its maintenance operation requires it to keep the noisier jets coming to Lindbergh.
In exchange for the port’s approval of the noise-reduction plan, the neighborhood and business groups have agreed to drop their opposition to the noise variance, a Port District spokesman said.
