Airliners Remain Above Battle on Southland Smog : Pollution: Pressure builds to require cuts in emissions. But the industry's clout and complexity stymie change.

By MARLA CONE

Feb. 20, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER

As the DC-10 destined for Honolulu speeds down the LAX runway and glides into the air, it leaves more than an ephemeral white streak in the skies above Los Angeles.

On each landing and takeoff, one wide-body aircraft spits out about 100 pounds of smog-causing gases. By the end of a typical day, jets at the Los Angeles Basin’s five commercial airports spew tons of fumes equivalent to that of more than a quarter of a million cars.

Yet, in a metropolitan area where virtually every factory, utility, small business and motorist has already shared the pain of efforts to clean up the nation’s worst smog, aircraft remain virtually untouched.

While freeway traffic has been the bane of smog fighters for decades, runway traffic raises even thornier dilemmas for federal authorities who are wrestling with options for cleaning up the oily, brown fumes wafting from airports.

The airline industry has long escaped its fair share because of its clout, the inordinate complexity of its operations, safety concerns and the sluggish pace of aircraft technology and turnover. Even NASA, which is spending $50 million developing state-of-the-art, low-pollution subsonic technology, says it will need at least a decade to perfect the substantially cleaner engines.

The struggle over aircraft illustrates that even after decades of smog control and technological advances, many major sources of the Southland’s pollution, especially industries with a national or global base, remain formidable obstacles.

“When it comes to airlines, there are so many issues running the gamut--from costs, to technical feasibility, to legal jurisdiction, to international issues,” said Rich Wilcox, chief of special projects at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Mobile Sources. “This is very complicated. It’s not like a truck going down the road. It’s not even like a vessel going into the port.”

A year ago the Clinton Administration, facing a court order to take over smog control in California, proposed a mandate that airlines slash emissions in the Los Angeles Basin 35% to 45% by 2005 in whatever way they chose. But last week, when the EPA unveiled its final plan, the agency had surrendered to pressure and dropped the idea.

Aircraft--which are responsible for three-quarters of the airlines’ 28 tons of daily emissions--were left untouched. Instead, carriers must gradually convert their baggage tractors and other ground equipment to electric power, beginning in 1997.

One longtime observer of air quality issues compared the EPA’s decision to stealing the hubcaps when it could have stolen the car: Why clean up ground equipment while leaving the biggest portion of the pollution unchecked?

But most airlines have been resistant--some say belligerent--when it comes to techniques for cleaning up jet exhaust. They contend that cutting pollution by 35% to 45%--an amount less than the mandates already facing oil refineries, power plants and other Southland industries--is impossible for airlines unless they eliminate half of their flights.

Only American Airlines broke ranks and stepped up to EPA’s challenge by offering an alternative. The company suggested that EPA require airlines to reroute their worldwide flights to fly only the cleanest planes into Los Angeles, John Wayne, Ontario, Burbank and Long Beach airports, which could cut emissions by 25% almost immediately.

“We’re a Texas-based company, but we do a lot of business in California and we have a lot of employees that live there, so if the community says they have a problem, we have to do our part,” said Bob Baker, American’s executive vice president in charge of operations. “In that vein, coupled with the fact that we did not like EPA’s original proposal, we decided we had to come up with something that was more acceptable to aviation interests, while at the same time having a positive impact on the environment.”

But the company’s “clean-fleet” proposal outraged Delta, United and other competitors, which balked at the idea of rerouting their complicated schedules to fly 747s, 767s and MD-11s to the basin’s airports instead of dirtier L-1011s, DC-10s and 727s.

If passengers want to keep flying where they want to, whenever they want to, the carriers said, they cannot comply, especially since some companies, such as TWA, Northwest and most cargo-haulers, have a greater number of older, bigger and “dirtier” craft.

“It simply cannot be done,” said Richard Ketler, a senior attorney at the Airline Transport Assn. “Every airline is in a different position in respect to the nature of their operations and type of aircraft they own. The majority of the companies are not in the same position American is.”

The other airlines said they would be willing only to gradually convert their ground vehicles to cleaner fuels.

American stood by its recommendation, causing a rift in the industry. After analyzing the fleets of all 44 airlines operating at the five airports, American concluded that “the vast majority have sufficient options to fly clean-fleet aircraft into the basin if they so choose.”

“There certainly has been industry pressure on us,” said American Airlines legal counsel Robert Bluhm. “But we took EPA at its word that they have to achieve 35% to 45% emissions reductions (from airlines). This isn’t a poker game. It’s not something to be negotiated. What’s at stake here is public health.”

But the EPA, while impressed with American’s offer, ultimately rejected it because it worried that the mandate could unfairly benefit some companies and drive down profits for others.

Even Transportation Secretary Federico Pena registered strong objections with EPA Administrator Carol Browner, warning that restrictions on the region’s flights “would have economic consequences that would reverberate throughout the economy of the South Coast area, the state of California and the nation.”

“We would have had a pretty tough choice to go forward without any support,” said Wilcox, who led the EPA’s effort to draft the airline rules. “The industry generally was uncooperative. American Airlines clearly was one that offered us something.”

The EPA has put the airline industry on notice that it will begin seeking input this May on whether national emission standards should be set for aircraft.

“I don’t think this is over by any sense of the word,” Baker said. “My reading of what EPA did is that they left the door ajar on the issue of airplanes.”

The Clinton Administration faces pressure from environmentalists, local air regulators, the Wilson Administration and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to set national standards for aircraft, trucks and locomotives to assist the region’s battle against smog. They argue that regulating those pollution sources only in Southern California places the region at a competitive disadvantage.

“I don’t understand why (EPA officials) don’t at least make some effort to look at the fundamental design of aircraft engines,” said James Lents, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, who has pushed for national aircraft standards.

“We try to get cleaner trucks and cleaner cars and cleaner industries, so it seems to me it’s a policy we should pursue,” he said.

Environmentalists say that at the least, EPA should have mandated American’s clean-fleet idea as a quick fix.

“American Airlines ought to be commended for seriously considering what they can do to make a significant contribution to the clean-air solution in this basin,” said Veronica Kun of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “I think it is a reasonable approach to direct the cleanest airliners here given that Los Angeles has the dirtiest air in the country.”

American had hoped that its idea, fashioned with the help of consultant and former Coalition for Clean Air President Tom Soto, could at least temporarily ward off any new engine standards or requirements to replace aircraft, which could cost the industry billions of dollars. Since EPA rejected the industrywide clean-fleet mandate, American will not reroute its 13 DC-10s at LAX that qualify as “dirty.”

“It seems inevitable that aircraft engines will be regulated in some fashion in the future,” Bluhm said. “It’s just impossible to predict how. What we were trying to do with our clean-fleet proposal was find a way to reduce emissions right away.”

As EPA officials contemplate their next step, airline emissions will rise dramatically over the next 10 years as new flights in the Los Angeles Basin grow by an expected 3% per year.

In 1990, aircraft at the five airports released 5.1 million pounds of hydrocarbons and 8.7 million pounds of nitrogen oxides. By 2005, airlines predict that hydrocarbons will drop to 2.4 million pounds, but nitrogen oxides will nearly double to 15 million pounds. If aircraft engines are left uncontrolled, airline emissions will surge to 9% of the basin’s nitrogen oxides in 2010, according to the EPA. The two pollutants combine to form ozone, the main ingredient of smog.

Ketler said airlines have already invested in dramatically improved airplane technology, doubling fuel efficiency rates in the past 10 years.

“It’s true that aircraft have not been subject to state and local and federal (clean air) legislation as other industries have,” he said. “But in the drive for fuel efficiency and noise laws, the technology has advanced significantly.”

However, many of the newer, quieter engines are actually worse for air quality because they burn fuel at higher pressures and temperatures, emitting more nitrogen oxides.

“There is a trade-off of pollution and noise,” Baker said. “You can make things quieter, but that is not good for the environment, and you can deal with the environment, but that is not good for noise.”

Manufacturers are trying to find technologies that ease both air and noise pollution; Boeing has developed a new 777, and NASA predicts that it could have an even cleaner and quieter subsonic technology ready for jets by 2005.

But Federal Aviation Administration officials urge caution in setting standards based on such new technologies, since it would take decades to bring them into widespread production at a realistic pace.

“Aviation technology is among the most expensive and complex in the U.S. economy,” the FAA told the EPA in a recent report. “Implementation of this emerging technology will be very costly and must be phased in on an economically practical schedule that recognizes the global character of the aviation industry.”

So far, the United States has been reluctant to set its own emission standards for aircraft. Instead, an arm of the United Nations is usually responsible for setting standards, and a move to toughen them is driven mostly by Scandinavia, Germany and France.

The U.S. airline industry fears that aggressive exhaust standards will follow noise-control rules that could cost $4 billion by 2000, according to FAA estimates.

“There is serious doubt that the industry is financially capable of another re-equipping of its fleets,” Baker said. “The industry is already struggling between now and the end of the decade to meet the noise standards, which in many cases involves retiring airplanes and buying new ones.”

Baker added that multibillion-dollar solutions are impractical since “on a comparative basis, the amount of pollution from airplanes compared to trucks and cars is de minimas . We’re more of a symbol.”

The solutions don’t all lie with expensive technologies, though. EPA had originally proposed that airlines consider changing landing and takeoff techniques, such as towing aircraft to runways and slowing aircraft with brakes only instead of using an engine procedure called reverse thrust.

But those options rankled the airlines and the FAA, which said pilots need to retain authority over procedures that involve flight safety. “Pilots have to have an unfettered ability to use discretion to ensure the safe operation of that aircraft,” Ketler said.

EPA officials--accustomed to the intricacies of the auto and truck industries--find many of the complexities of the airline industry unfamiliar, which contributed to their decision to back down. They said they are having trouble deciphering what is a legitimate concern and what is simply industry resistance to change.

Airlines’ concerns about safety seem “more of an emotional appeal than technical reality,” Wilcox said. “They very cleverly seized on that and used it in conjunction with the economic argument. You’ve hit on one of the problems in regulating something so new in such a short period of time. It takes time to understand how this industry really works and seeing what the red herrings are.”

While air-quality officials and airline executives wrestle with the aircraft dilemma, the carriers will focus their anti-smog efforts on the ground.

Seventy-five percent of their baggage tractors, lifts, catering trucks and other ground vehicles in the Los Angeles Basin must be converted to electricity and 25% to natural gas by 2010. Also, they will switch from auxiliary jet engines to cleaner electricity at gates to power aircraft while on the ground.

American Airlines--which operates 400 ground vehicles at LAX alone--will spend about $17 million on the conversion, said Dewey Kulzer, the company’s ground equipment manager. But unlike the billions it would take to buy new aircraft, Kulzer said, it is a solid investment that will pay for itself in five years through lower fuel bills.

“Ground equipment evolution can be very fast,” Kulzer said. “But aircraft and aircraft engines are designed 10 years in advance. Those aircraft you’re seeing on the runway will be there 10 years from now.”

Lents said the struggle over aircraft is comparable to the battle over cleaning up cars 20 years ago. Auto manufacturers complained vehemently, but in the face of unflinching California mandates, they ultimately invented technologies that eliminated more than 90% of exhaust.

“If EPA had begun to pursue (aircraft standards) back in 1977 when this was first talked about,” Lents said, “just think where we’d be today.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Unfriendly Skies

Commercial airlines at Los Angeles International, Burbank, John Wayne, Ontario and Long Beach airports emit almost 21 million pounds of smog-causing pollutants per year. While that amounts to only 1% of the Los Angeles basin’s total emissions, the airlines represent one of the largest uncontrolled sources.

Pounds of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons in 1990:

Aircraft main engines: 13,879,509 (66%)

Auxiliary power units: 846,951 (4%)

Ground service equipment: 3,294,078 (16%)

Foreign carriers: 2,495,133 (12%)

Air taxis: 218,053 (1%)

Total: 20,733,724 pounds per year

Five cleanest and dirtiest wide-bodied aircraft in terms of emissions:

Cleanest:

A310-300

B747-400

B767-200