Foes of Burbank Airport Expansion Need to Face Facts : Opponents’ lawsuits are unwinnable, their ‘share the noise” proposal untenable. An administrators have no intention of making the facility a mini-LAX.

Airplanes make noise.

Newer ones make far less noise than older ones, but even the newest deliver a great rush of sound to anyone within several thousand feet.

I know this. I live directly under Burbank Airport’s main departure flight path.

Like most of my neighbors, I long ago grew accustomed to the noise. Some of the newer neighbors haven’t. They should. Jet noise is fact No. 1 you can apply to Burbank Airport or any other.

Fact No. 2 is that the people running Burbank Airport intend to stay as small as possible while meeting the needs of several million people a year who prefer it for short-distance business and personal air travel.

The airport will continue in the same limited, regional transportation role it has performed since 1946, when the giant Los Angeles International Airport opened and replaced Burbank Airport as the jumping-off point for most coast-to-coast and all international flights.

If Burbank Airport had ever entertained delusions of becoming even “mini-LAX,” as some neighborhood critics charge, it would not be planning a terminal with only 10 new gates by 2010, up from the 17 it has now. What it is and will continue to be is a micro -facility, serving 8% to 10% of the travelers using LAX.

Plans for a new terminal to replace its outmoded 63-year-old facility are on hold at the moment because of two lawsuits challenging the airport’s environmental impact report. They were filed in April by the Los Angeles city government and school district.

Both suits are based on misguided politics, a serious distortion of the facts and a contradictory legal interpretation. They are, in my view, impossible to win.

The courts have said repeatedly that airplanes, not airport terminals, make noise. The city of L.A. scoffs at this theory when applied to Burbank, but followed it in its own environmental report for a new 700,000-square-foot terminal at its Ontario Airport.

With no hope of winning in court, the city and schools aim to force the airport to spend hundreds of millions of dollars soundproofing and air conditioning a large but unknown number of homes and every school within three miles. This is money the airport doesn’t have, can’t get and shouldn’t have to spend anyway.

Only one school and no Los Angeles homes are within the high, 70-decibel area. Others endure noise but at far lower levels.

A second goal of the lawsuits is to force the airport to direct a big percentage of takeoffs east over Burbank and Glendale instead of to the south over Studio City, Valley Village and North Hollywood.

This “share the noise” idea, often touted as the perfect solution, is one Burbank Airport could easily promise but, unfortunately, cannot deliver on. Airport operators have no say in runway choices. Pilots invariably choose their passengers’ safety over sound control. Nearly 90% of the time they choose the longer, south-facing, downhill runway, into the wind and away from the 3,000-foot Verdugo Hills.

Passenger jets depart in other directions only when the wind, temperature and takeoff weight make that possible.

Extending the east-west runway by 1,000 to 1,500 feet would, under normal weather conditions, equalize pilots’ choices. But that would require Los Angeles’ cooperation, and the last thing L.A. seems to want is to cooperate. Cooperation doesn’t get publicity for politicians. Confrontation, conflict and a flurry of futile actions do.

The best single argument supporting Burbank Airport’s new and more spacious terminal is neither technical nor political. It’s economic and sociological.

Given California’s continued population growth despite a temporarily sluggish economy, it would be short-sighted to restrict the minimal passenger growth Burbank Airport expects in the near future. This is especially true in light of the East Valley’s high employment and low office vacancy rates.

Burbank’s new terminal could easily be too small to meet demand in its first construction phase. The airport’s estimate is for only a moderate increase in passenger growth by 1998, from nearly 2 million passenger departures this year to 2.7 million. That’s an increase of only around 6% a year.

If, and only if, the new terminal meets or exceeds that level of traffic would work begin on the second and final phase.

Burbank will have to be able to serve 700,000 more passengers by 1998 and a lot more by the year 2010, under the most careful estimates.

It’s entirely possible that by the turn of the century the airlines will be using even larger, quieter planes carrying more passengers on the same number of flights. But that’s speculation.

The only valid questions now center on how the facility will handle them. Will it be in a terminal that’s big enough? Or will it be in a cramped, 63-year-old building built too close to the runways for the newest and quietest jets being flown today and others expected to be in service tomorrow?