Homeowners Near Airport

Bob Hughes writes (Letters, Oct. 14): “People who move next to a major airport have no right to gripe about the aircraft noise.”

Where was Hughes 30, 40 or 50 years ago? Certainly not in Santa Ana Heights. If he had been there, he would have seen a neighborhood of people living a peaceful, rural life style. The airport was hardly more than a landing strip used by small aircraft.

Unfortunately, many people believed the County Board of Supervisors when, in the early ‘60s, they said commercial jets would never use Orange County Airport. Now these homeowners are suffering because they stayed in the area.

Don’t call the homeowners greedy. That label seems to be more appropriate for the developers who have reaped the profits from the airport expansion.

HELEN DINKINS, Newport Beach