Complaints and Concerns Rise as Copters Fill the Sky : Tour operators could be regulated while essential flights remain undisturbed

We have a question for you. What does the amazing proliferation of helicopter traffic in our region’s skies have to do with a gridlocked transportation system in which few people are willing or able to give up their cars?

Answer: The latter has helped to create the former, which means that our mass transit officials and motorists have helped as well.

Think about it. If you were in Washington, D.C., and wanted a tour of the national monuments, you’d hire a limousine, a cab, or just walk. Want to see the sights in downtown Manhattan? You can still hire a horse and carriage for that. You can even brave the subway there--a true mass transit marvel that actually takes you where you want to go.

But those options would be ridiculous for Los Angeles. The horse would die of exhaustion, or fright. It would take a week’s salary or more to pay off the cab or limo driver, and our subway system is becoming famous around the land for making sure that you still have blocks or miles to go before you reach your destination.

Small wonder that helicopter dinner tours are big business now. For just $100, you can take off from one of the San Fernando Valley airports and be whisked past the prime sights to dinner at the Transamerica Building downtown without ever setting foot to a pedal on a clogged freeway.

Helicopters have also become part of the last line of defense between crime and police departments (like ours) that are still trying to find ways to hire enough officers for street patrols. Severely injured in an accident on the 101 Freeway? It’s likely that a helicopter will be the best way to get to a hospital. And sure, news organizations can drift into overkill on certain incidents, such as the now infamous O.J. Simpson freeway chase that involved 19 media choppers. But you watched it, didn’t you?

Those news choppers have also helped rescue people during natural disasters, helped the police deploy during the 1992 riots, and they tell you where to avoid gridlock on your morning commute. Moreover, you can’t fight wildfires here without choppers, either in water drops or in ferrying firefighters to remote sights. Part of the reason your payroll check is credited to your account so quickly is because the banks use helicopters. Have a rich customer who wants to see a lot of prime real estate? Here, they’ll use a helicopter to show the property.

In fact, Fred O’Donnell of the Federal Aviation Administration’s western region office says that Los Angeles is probably unparalleled in the world among cities of its size in the amount of its helicopter traffic.

“The list of those who depend on this mode of transportation here is extremely long,” O’Donnell says.

But are we closing in on a dangerous saturation point? The FAA does not think so. The numbers seem to bear this out, with just six non-military helicopter accidents in northern Los Angeles County since 1991. That includes the fatal Jan. 14 tour crash in the Cahuenga Pass that killed two and injured two others. That incident is under investigation.

But is there any mechanism for citizens to complain about the aerial invasion of noise and find possible solutions? The answer is yes. And would it behoove the nonessential helicopter operators, such as the tour companies, to heed the rising chorus of noise complaints. Again, the answer is yes.

First, there is the Los Angeles Basin Helicopter and Community Compatibility Board. It meets monthly, and knowledge of its existence, save for perhaps the most avid chopper haters, is still rare among the public.

The board is composed of FAA officials, helicopter operators, and average citizens. What the board does, according to O’Donnell, is to investigate areas of complaint and concern. “The purpose is not necessarily to correct or stop the problem, but to look at what the operators are doing, to ask if it is essential and to explain why, if it is. But if the board sees an opportunity to provide relief, it can suggest changes in where the pilots are flying and how. It can suggest changes in the direction of routes or landing approaches,” O’Donnell said. “We recognize that pilots sometimes forget that they impact the lives of people on the ground.”

You can contact the board, O’Donnell says, through the Los Angeles Flight Standards District Office at (310) 215-2150.

And why would it make sense for the tour companies, for example, to begin to listen to burgeoning complaints? Well, even the Los Angeles City Council has begun to ask questions about the amount of helicopter traffic. And the FAA has been known to step in and impose standards of its own, such as it has done in Hawaii. There, the FAA has imposed an SFAR 71, or Special Federal Regulation, specifying minimum altitudes and other requirements on tour operations. The operators have condemned the restrictions, but have been unsuccessful thus far in challenging them in court.

Such steps are not on the horizon now, but it would make sense for the tour companies to try to reach an accommodation with angry residents . . . before concerns and irritations escalate even further.