Who Benefits From Burbank Airport?

Reader Bunnie Strassner’s complaint (Letters, Dec. 11) that Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena receive “revenues” from the Burbank Airport is dead wrong.

Laws governing every airport in the country mandate that airport revenues can be used only for airport-related costs. Owners, whether they be cities, counties or states, get no direct dollars from airport operations.

The people who benefit from airports are the people who use them. In Burbank’s case, that’ll be nearly 5 million passengers this year, around two-thirds of whom live in the city of Los Angeles or who are visiting that city. Shutting down or scaling back the airport, as Ms. Strassner proposes, would do serious economic harm to the eastern San Fernando Valley she purports to protect.

As for the new terminal building, that’s needed mainly for safety and for future passenger convenience, not primarily to handle more flights. By my calculation, the 14 active gates now in place could handle several hundred flights at half-hour intervals during each of Burbank’s 16-hour operating days. The airport this year will average around 77 commercial jet flights each day, and the best estimate for the year 2010 is around 150.

What are inadequate now, and must be improved, are the passenger facilities.

If reader Strassner knows of some better location for a replacement for the Burbank Airport, one that will bring noise to no one yet be quickly accessible to several million travelers, I’d sure like to know about it.

JAMES E. FOY

North Hollywood

* In the ongoing legal battle between Burbank residents and Burbank Airport about noise, there’s one point nobody has brought up. The airport was there first.

WILLIAM ANDERSON

Woodland Hills