John Wayne Takeoff Rules May Change : Aircraft: Two 1989 incidents prompt the FAA to consider altering the controversial noise-limitation procedures.
Two scary but little-known incidents at John Wayne Airport three years ago apparently contributed to the Federal Aviation Administration’s desire to change the controversial takeoff procedures at John Wayne Airport.
To help satisfy a 1985 noise-limitation agreement between the county and the city of Newport Beach, the FAA agreed to allow certain jetliners on takeoff to reduce their engine power as soon as they attained an altitude of 500 feet.
But the FAA, in hopes of increasing the margin of safety should something go wrong during takeoff, is currently gathering data on changes to noise levels if the jetliners are required to maintain full takeoff power until they achieve an altitude of at least 800 feet.
The two incidents at John Wayne Airport that helped spark interest in the safety issue occurred in 1989, and involved Boeing 737s operated by America West Airlines, according to an internal FAA memo written the year after the incidents occurred. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
In the first incident, a departing jetliner loaded with passengers attained an altitude of 1,100 feet and then fell 700 feet before the crew realized that the plane was losing altitude and increased power to pull the aircraft out of its descent.
“It was very difficult to understand why the crew did not recognize the descent and take corrective action,” the June 7, 1990, memo states.
In the second incident, another jetliner’s tail struck the runway as the plane angled upward into the sky, causing “substantial damage,” the memo reports.
Alvin L. Bieber, the author of the memo and a flight standards officer for the FAA, blamed the takeoff noise restrictions at John Wayne Airport in part for the incidents. He concluded that commercial aircraft pilots “are operating the B737-300 at its finite performance limit” in order to satisfy the restrictions and to have their takeoffs recorded as “exempt slot status.”
“The standards should be more realistic and achievable by those aircraft which are required to comply,” Bieber recommended.
“Exempt slot status” refers to the way John Wayne Airport rations daily departures.
Aircraft that average less than 86.4 decibels at the closest noise monitoring station during takeoffs are exempt from consideration when airport authorities divide up the number of flights or “slots” allocated to the various airline companies serving Orange County. Some vacuum cleaners at close range produce noise levels of about 80 decibels, while amplified rock music performances run between 120 and 130 decibels.
The FAA said it sent its original investigative reports on the two incidents to the National Transportation Safety Board, which said an initial search failed to locate the documents.
America West officials acknowledged that both incidents occurred, but said they were unwilling to research company files to find details such as the departure times and dates of the flights involved, and their destinations. Nor could they recall the findings of any investigations into the causes.
However, an FAA investigator and a John Wayne Airport official, both of whom requested anonymity, said both incidents were attributable to pilot errors. After the tail strike incident, America West modified its instructions to pilots about departures from the airport.
Another memo--sent to the FAA in November, 1987, by Joseph M. Schwind, a deputy director of the Air Line Pilots Assn.--claims that pilots have also been pushing Boeing 757s to their performance limits for the same reason, although that has been vehemently denied by the FAA, the airlines and several pilots who fly the aircraft out of John Wayne Airport.
The takeoff procedure, Schwind wrote, “is extremely demanding of both man and machine.”
Last year a pilots’ survey named John Wayne Airport one of the five most hazardous airports in the United States, partly because of the power cutbacks allowed at an altitude of 500 feet.
Pilots contend that the cutback as well as high takeoff angles of 23 degrees or greater are unsafe.
The airlines and the aircraft manufacturers designed the procedures to meet the airport’s noise limits, and the FAA has changed its mind about their safety several times.
Two years ago, the first of two FAA working groups dominated by airline pilots began studying proposals to standardize takeoff procedures at all airports, a strategy that would end the special techniques used at John Wayne Airport.
But John Wayne Airport Manager Janice M. Mittermeier persuaded the current FAA working group to delay standardization until the impact on local residents could be measured, especially in view of the 1985 court-ordered settlement between Newport Beach and the Orange County Board of Supervisors that permitted a $310-million expansion of John Wayne Airport in exchange for noise restrictions and other concessions.
On April 1, a series of jet noise tests began at the airport in which no aircraft is allowed to reduce power below an altitude of 800 feet. Once the test results are analyzed this fall, airport officials and the FAA will try to determine whether the new procedures effectively violate the 1985 court settlement and what should be done about it.
