Assembly OKs Lifting Jet Noise Limit in Crises

The Assembly has unanimously approved and sent to the state Senate a bill aimed at preventing airports in California, including Van Nuys Airport, from imposing noise restrictions on medical emergency flights.

The measure, approved 73 to 0 on Monday, was introduced by Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge) to head off a push by some homeowners near Van Nuys Airport to force medical flights to use quieter jets at night, as all other flights must.

Jenifer McDonald, La Follette’s legislative assistant, said the assemblywoman introduced the bill at the request of Alan Chatfield of Chatfield Air Ambulance, a Van Nuys-based charter company that transports human organs.

In Los Angeles, emergency flights are exempt from an ordinance that bars takeoffs between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. of planes that produce more than 74 decibels of noise.

Long Beach and Santa Monica airports and John Wayne Airport in Orange County have similar nighttime exemptions for medical flights, said Chatfield, whose company is the largest of several medical flight operators at Van Nuys.

Don Schultz of Van Nuys, president of Ban Airport Noise, said the bill is “an unnecessary bit of legislation.” He said homeowners never opposed the medical flights’ exemption from the noise restrictions and that Chatfield “chose to make an issue out of this when it wasn’t an issue.”

“No one was opposing emergency medical flights. If emergency flights have to take off between the curfew hours, so be it. If they have to use a louder plane because it is cheaper, so be it. That’s what the airport is there for,” Schultz added.

Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, and leaders of several other homeowners’ groups have proposed that charter companies operating nighttime emergency flights from Van Nuys be forced to use quieter jets when available.

Silver declined comment Tuesday but previously said, “The issue is one of economics. What they really want to do is use the oldest, noisiest equipment possible.”

Chatfield said Tuesday that “it’s not a matter of money, it’s a matter of plane availability.”

He said that of the about 20 jets available for charter at Van Nuys Airport, only six satisfy the regulation.

Under the bill approved by the Assembly, local anti-noise ordinances would not apply if a delay in an emergency flight “would jeopardize a patient’s medical condition,” according to an analysis.