Opposition Urged to Airport Flight Path Realignment : Westside: Group seeks to enlist school, state and federal officials in its efforts. The FAA says the change would result in safer, quieter air traffic.

A coalition of Westside homeowner groups has launched a campaign to enlist school, state and federal officials in its fight against a proposal to change the flight path for pilots approaching Santa Monica Airport.

In a meeting this week, residents who live east of the busy airport made their pitch to Los Angeles school board President Mark Slavkin and representatives of other public officials. They argued that the new flight path would bring aircraft closer to several schools, exposing them to greater risk.

Also attending the meeting, hosted by the Westside Civic Federation, were representatives of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Under the airport plan, planes would lock onto a signal during inclement weather and approach the airfield in a new flight path 15 degrees south of the current course, flying over communities such as upscale Cheviot Hills.

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and Santa Monica Airport did not attend Monday’s meeting. In the past, however, they have argued that the plan will result in safer, quieter air traffic around the airport, which--with 200,000 flights last year--is said to be the country’s busiest single-runway airfield.

They point out that under the new plan, the FAA would install a more advanced beacon system, called Localized Directional Aid, or LDA, at the east end of the airfield. Because the new route over Cheviot Hills avoids tall buildings, the officials add, planes would be able to descend more gradually over a longer distance, eliminating the need to circle the airport to lose elevation.

“The LDA will improve the margin of safety,” said Bill Worden, president of the Santa Monica Airport Assn., a pilots group. Already, he added, the chances of residents on the ground being killed by a falling aircraft are extremely remote.

But some residents say the proposed flight path puts aircraft too close to more than a dozen public and private schools.

EmyLou Ballard, a Westside PTA leader, said that instead of making it easier for planes to use Santa Monica Airport, neighbors and officials should work together to reduce the volume of air traffic to and from the airfield.

She said PTA members would help organize opposition to the proposed flight path change. Slavkin said he was “terribly concerned” about the airport, pledging that the Board of Education would address the issue.

The flight path proposal has stirred up considerable opposition on the Westside. In two public hearings held by the FAA last month, a total of nearly 600 residents turned out, almost all of them critics of the flight plan.

Leaders of the Civic Federation, an umbrella group of 17 Los Angeles neighborhood associations, said recent history shows that their fears of crashes are well-founded. On May 7, a plane crashed into a Mar Vista garage, less than half a mile from a school on Walgrove Avenue. No one on the ground was injured. The pilot, William Davenport of Mar Vista, was hospitalized and released from Santa Monica Hospital on May 15.

The FAA is conducting public hearings and accepting written comments until June as part of an environmental impact review of the airport proposal.