Council Demands Airport Curfew : Burbank: Officials list conditions that must be met before city will approve terminal expansion project.

The Burbank City Council drew up a list of conditions Tuesday night that will have to be met before it goes along with the planned expansion of the Burbank Airport terminal.

Leading the list is a condition championed by residents near the airport--a mandatory curfew on takeoffs between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Although some airlines using the airport have strenuously objected to this restriction, the Burbank council has the power to get it adopted by the airport’s governing board, the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. The council appoints only three members of the board--Glendale and Pasadena also appoint three members each. But on major issues, such as the expansion, a majority of the members of each city’s delegation must approve.

“We set the ground rules that the airport commission has to play by,” said Burbank City Councilman Bob Kramer. “We won’t expand or relocate until these conditions are met.”

There is one agency with more power than the council, however, on this issue. A mandatory curfew must be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, a process that could take years.

The airport now has a voluntary curfew on takeoffs by commercial flights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., but it is regularly ignored by Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, both of which have scheduled flights that leave before 7 a.m.

Another condition the council linked to the multimillion-dollar terminal expansion project is the establishment of a 20-year master plan for the facility. That long-range plan, they said, should include any proposed expansion of plane-boarding gates beyond the current 14, an analysis of the cost of the new terminal in relation to expected revenues and a study of how the new terminal might affect adjacent neighborhoods.

“They have to know what the end product will be before we go forward,” said Councilman Ted McConkey. “As of right now, there is no master plan.”

The council also wants further studies on the impact of aircraft noise on nearby neighborhoods and assurances that tax revenues lost from now-private lands to be obtained for the project will be replaced.

And the council wants cleared up the issue of whether the FAA ever ordered the Airport Authority to move the existing terminal, built more than 60 years ago, for safety reasons. Airport Authority officials have said that an order from the FAA sparked the project, but documents indicate the federal agency merely advised that changes be made.

The only matter upon which people on all sides of the expansion issues can agree is that the popularity of Burbank Airport is steadily increasing.

In 1994, 4.8 million passengers used the airport, which handles an average of 180 commercial flights a day. Annual passenger levels are projected to reach 5.4 million in 1998 and 10 million in 2010.

The terminal project is designed to proceed in two phases. The first would nearly triple the size of the 163,000-square-foot building by 1998, adding five aircraft gates to the current 14. The second would add 205,000 square feet of space and eight more aircraft gates by 2010.