Higher Noise Levels Sought for Airport : Jetliners: Under new federal safety rules, the widely used MD-80 can’t meet the John Wayne decibel limit set by 1985 court settlement.

John Wayne Airport authorities will soon seek to increase permissible jet takeoff noise levels by lobbying neighboring homeowner groups and the Newport Beach City Council to amend a 1985 court settlement that ended decades of anti-noise lawsuits.

Airport spokeswoman Courtney Wiercioch said an amendment establishing higher noise limits was necessitated by new federal rules, which go into effect April 1, 1993, and prevent the airport from banning certain commercial jet aircraft--even if they violate the airport’s noise standards, which are the toughest in the United States.

The new rules prohibit pilots from reducing power during takeoff until they reach a minimum altitude of 800 feet.

Months of tests at the county airport show that the new procedure causes one aircraft--the McDonnell Douglas MD-80--to violate the airport’s noise standards, which are the result of a hard-won, seven-year-old agreement between John Wayne Airport and its neighbors.

In order to meet the noise limits, airlines previously had pilots of their MD-80s cut power at 500 feet. But many pilots considered the procedure unsafe, and lobbied the Federal Aviation Administration to adopt a rule forbidding the procedure.

“Safety is our No. 1 concern,” said City Councilwoman Evelyn Hart. “But we just cannot take more noise in Newport Beach. There has to be a way not to intensify noise over Newport. . . . We hesitate to change the agreement, because it’s been holding very well for us all these years.”

Although the MD-80 is not as big as the Boeing 757s that also serve the airport, it is the airport’s noisiest jetliner and is used by several major airlines serving John Wayne, including Alaska, American, Northwest and TWA. The aircraft is used on 14 of the airport’s average of 90 daily departures.

Federal regulations bar the airport from banishing the MD-80, and financially strapped air carriers plead that they don’t have costly, quieter jets readily available to substitute.

“Taking the MD-80 out would pose a problem for us at John Wayne,” said American Airlines spokesman Al Becker. “It’s not just the lack of availability of other aircraft, it’s the type that best fits the market that’s also at stake. We would have to pull other types of aircraft out of the markets they’re serving, and the planes--such as the Boeing 757--would be too large for the market segment they would serve at John Wayne. We wouldn’t do it.”

According to airport officials, refusal to relax the noise limits would effectively eliminate some destinations now available to John Wayne passengers. For example, TWA, which is operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, uses the MD-80 exclusively at the airport. “We’d be telling TWA they can’t serve Orange County,” Wiercioch said. TWA flies to St. Louis.

Airport officials say they will formally seek an amendment to the 1985 settlement after they circulate a new environmental impact report.

Already, the California Department of Fish and Game has asked John Wayne Airport officials to consider the negative impact more noise would have on birds around Upper Newport Bay, which is beneath the departure path.

A preliminary environmental document shows that airport officials are proposing to allow the MD-80 to reach average noise levels of 103 decibels at the noise monitoring station closest to the runway in Santa Ana Heights. Currently the limit there is 100.8 decibels.

Some vacuum cleaners average 80 decibels; live rock music performances often exceed 120 decibels.