Doctors Say Ban of Night Flights Will Cost Lives : Airport Noise: Surgeons contend that an interruption of the flights will jeopardize their transplant programs. Van Nuys residents call that propaganda by airplane leasing companies.

Proposed curbs on nighttime jet flights from Van Nuys Airport would jeopardize some of the Los Angeles area’s world-renowned organ-transplant programs and cause critically ill patients to die, surgeons and organ-transplant program administrators said Tuesday.

“Our program would be severely hindered, and there would be a lot of lives that would be lost” if the airport were to be shut down at night, as some have proposed, said Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil of the UCLA Medical Center liver transplant program.

At an airport news conference organized by one of the busiest organ-transport services on the West Coast, Busuttil and Dr. Leonard Bailey, of the Loma Linda University Medical Center infant heart-transplant program, pleaded with city officials and anti-noise groups to forgo further restrictions on nighttime operations at the airport.

But Don Schultz, leader of the largest group of anti-noise activists at the Van Nuys Airport, said the news conference was part of a propaganda drive by aircraft leasing companies. He said the purpose of the propaganda was to “discredit the residents’ complaints” about nighttime noise at the airport.

“We’re not trying to close down the airport to emergency flights at night, and we never will, because it’s irresponsible,” said Schultz, president of Ban Airport Noise, a coalition of homeowner groups.

Chatfield Air Ambulance, which specializes in arranging the emergency flights, organized the event to explain the airport’s importance as a hub for the transportation of emergency organs, spokesman Timothy Fives said. “We’re here today to explain what the negative consequences would be” if further restrictions on night operations were enacted, he said.

Susan Hofheins, whose 6-month-old daughter’s life was saved by a heart transplant at Loma Linda, also argued against restrictions on nighttime flights. “We’re so grateful that Laura got her heart, we want other children to have the same benefit,” said Hofheins, one of several parents who attended the news conference.

The Loma Linda program has transplanted 56 infant hearts, and many of the operations were preceded by emergency flights from Van Nuys transporting surgical teams to distant hospitals to remove hearts from infants who had died. As with all operations to remove donor organs, the delicate surgeries often occur at night so they won’t disrupt normally scheduled surgeries, said those familiar with the process. Hearts remain viable for four hours outside the body and must be implanted as quickly as possible, doctors said.

The UCLA liver transplant program, the second-largest in the world, has transplanted about 450 human livers in the past six years, and nearly 70% have involved nighttime flights out of Van Nuys, Busuttil said.

Fives said his company flies about 20 times a month from Van Nuys. No other airport is as suitable for the purpose, he said. Larger airports, such as Ontario and Los Angeles International, have regularly scheduled commercial flights that can delay the takeoff and landing of emergency flights, he said. Smaller airports, such as Santa Monica and Torrance, already have nighttime bans on all flights.

Because the flights often occur at night, and because they are exempt from the 74-decibel noise limit that has been in place at the airport since 1981, the emergency flights generate many of the noise complaints. During the first nine months of 1989, 22 emergency medical flights have exceeded the nighttime noise limit that is in effect from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., airport records show.

Schultz said he wants the 74-decibel noise level, which prohibits flights during that period by most of the 25 Lear jets based at the airport, to be lower still. But, he said, emergency flights by the noisier aircraft should remain exempt from those limitations if the quieter jets are unavailable for leasing in an emergency.

Gerald A. Silver, another anti-noise activist, who is president of the Homeowners of Encino, took a harder line and urged government action to require the leasing companies to buy quieter aircraft. “We don’t want to stop the necessary and important lifesaving flights,” he said, “but they’re going to have to play responsibly . . . and have quieter aircraft.”

Proposals to close the Van Nuys Airport at night, and to lower the allowable decibel level during the curfew period, are being considered as part of a $300,000 federal study of noise at the airport. But even if further restrictions on nighttime flights are adopted as a result of those federal studies, the emergency flights would continue to be exempt, observers said.

Kelly Jensen, an aide to Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City), who is on the committee conducting the federal noise studies, said any noise restrictions that come out of the studies would leave intact exemptions that apply to the emergency flights.

“The congressman has no problem with emergency aircraft in life-threatening situations taking off from Van Nuys Airport at any time, including at night,” Jensen said.