Politics Caused Rerouting of Plane Departures

* The editorial “Airport Traffic Noise Is a Cost of Safety” (Oct. 3), in which The Times calls the “fair share” plan “grossly unrealistic” is grossly mistaken.

In fact, the fair share plan, in which airplanes out of Burbank would depart to the east and to the southeast, as well as to the southwest, is nothing new. These departure patterns were used in the past without any safety problems.

Specifically, in 1979 (when the majority of planes out of Burbank were Boeing 727s that did not have the climb rates of aircraft now departing from the airport), the north-south runway was closed for four months; all aircraft departed on the east-west runway.

Safety was not a problem during that period. Sherry Avery, the FAA controller to whom the editorial refers, recently testified at an administrative proceeding that as an air traffic controller, she did not have any safety issues with those departures. She further testified that commercial airlines continued to use the eastern departure even after the north-south runway reopened.

And, in fact, a representative of the Air Transport Assn. estimated that commercial pilots would use the north-south runway 30% to 40% of the time, if given the option.

Likewise, Ms. Avery further testified that planes departed on the north-south runway and turned to the east without incident before 1986. After 1986, the departure route was abandoned, and all of those planes were also routed to the southwest.

The point, of course, is that departures of aircraft out of Burbank Airport were, to some extent, previously “fanned out.” To institute such procedures again, particularly when the airport seeks to grow exponentially, is hardly “unrealistic.”

As it now stands, all departing flights have been routed to the southwest to the detriment of Los Angeles residents, while the residents of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena, the cities that own the airport, are spared the noise.

Not surprisingly, it is those cities that are represented on the Airport Authority. The Airport Authority then wisely hides behind the issue of safety, which everyone agrees is of utmost importance, to explain the airport operations. In fact, it is simply politics that have caused all airline departures to move to the southwest.

LES S. ARIAN

Valley Village