GLENDALE / BURBANK : Airport Authority Resists Curfew Effort : Burbank: Board votes against hiring consultant who might have lobbied for federal approval of proposal.

The movement to impose a mandatory curfew on flights out of Burbank Airport was dealt a blow Thursday night when airport commissioners voted not to hire a key consultant who could have helped win federal approval of the proposed curfew.

The motion to hire the consultant, Aviation Systems Association Inc., stalled on a 4-3 vote with one abstention. One commissioner was absent.

The commission’s three members from Burbank have pushed for the curfew, arguing that it would bring relief to Burbank neighborhoods under the flight paths of roaring jets. Most representatives from Glendale and Pasadena, which run the airport with Burbank, have resisted the curfew.

At least one commissioner suggested that the entire proposal be dropped because it was unlikely the Federal Aviation Administration would approve a curfew.

“It is a waste of time, a waste of money and the likelihood of success is zero,” Robert Garcin, a Glendale commissioner, said in an interview before the meeting. “All we are doing is raising the expectations of the people, only to find it can’t be accomplished.”

After the proposal to hire the consultant failed, the Burbank commissioners called for a second vote. It failed as well.

Commissioner Philip Berlin, from Burbank, said Thursday’s votes will allow the Airport Authority to stall the mandatory curfew proposal indefinitely. He noted that the consultant had been recommended by the authority’s own legal committee just this week.

“I think it is a reflection of the continuation of the status quo,” Berlin said. “Those who voted not to accept the legal committee’s recommendation don’t want Aviation Systems and don’t want a mandatory curfew. Right now it’s basically in a holding pattern.”

Carl W. Raggio Jr., president of the authority, said that he does not want a mandatory curfew but that some other method should be sought to help alleviate airplane noise late at night. “The legal committee is going to have to come back with another recommendation,” he said.

Thursday’s votes marked a change of direction for the authority, which just last month voted to seek federal approval for a mandatory curfew that would ban all flights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. The vote sent the issue to the board’s legal committee, which was given two months to find lawyers who could fight for the curfew.

Commercial airlines currently curb late-night and early morning flights out of Burbank on a voluntary basis, but the voluntary curfew is routinely ignored by at least two major airlines.

On Monday, the legal committee voted 2 to 1, with Garcin dissenting, to recommend Aviation Systems of Torrance to the board to help win approval for a curfew.

The mandatory curfew is the most significant of 11 conditions that the Burbank City Council has set forth to the authority in exchange for its support of the airport’s proposed multimillion-dollar expansion.