Roy Disney Moves Jet Operations to Van Nuys to Accommodate 737
There’s nothing Mickey Mouse about one man’s single jet operation at Burbank Airport.
Plans call for the operation to move to Van Nuys Airport because Burbank’s runways are too short to accommodate a new global aircraft.
That’s right. Burbank, the only San Fernando Valley airport with commercial flights, is too small.
The man is Roy Disney, vice chairman of the company launched by his uncle, Walt Disney, and estimated by Forbes last year to be worth $810 million.
The new aircraft he is buying is a Boeing business jet--a $40-million corporate version of the 737 jetliner, the most popular jetliner in the world, commonly used to transport 120 to 140 passengers.
Test flights of the new Boeing jet began this month and the first of 29 orders for the plane will roll out of assembly hangars later this year, a Boeing spokeswoman said.
Disney’s jet will be the first 737 to be based at Van Nuys, officials said.
The move to Van Nuys will transfer Burbank’s estimated yearly share of revenues from the aircraft--$81,000--to Los Angeles and its school district, Knight said.
The jet will need most of the 8,001-foot runway to get off the ground because it will be heavily laden with fuel to fly nonstop to Disney’s 18th century battlemented castle on the south coast of Ireland.
Burbank’s two runways--one 6,885 feet and the other 6,032 feet--are considered too short by the Federal Aviation Administration to safely accommodate the jet with its load.
A special hangar is to be built at Van Nuys to house the operation, called Air Shamrock.
Disney’s current aircraft, based at Mercury Air Center in Burbank, is a 19-passenger twin-engine Canadair turbojet, according to FAA records.
Burbank City Manager Bud Ovrom said the loss of revenue from Disney’s aircraft will amount to the equivalent of the cost of “half a police officer or a junior level librarian.”
The loss of revenue will have little impact on the Burbank Unified School District officials budget because even although they receive about $835,000 in tax revenue from corporate jets, the state makes up any shortfalls should the city lose corporate aircraft tenants, officials said.
In comparative terms to the overall budget, Ovrom said the move “is not material,” adding that it is “a pretty rare circumstance that someone needs a 737 with fuel tanks to go to Ireland.
Still, Ovrom said, the city would like to retain its prominent local businessman, but that there is little that can be done to persuade Disney to change his plans.
Burbank Airport officials estimate as many as 37 corporate jet aircraft are based there, ranging from the smaller Cessna Citations to the spacious Gulfstream V. They added, however, that they do not keep track of the comings and goings of corporate customers using the airport.
“The fixed-based operators act independently of the airport management,” said Burbank Airport spokesman Sean McCarthy.
Currently, 122 privately owned jets are based at Van Nuys Airport, which is the busiest general aviation airport in the nation and has no commercial flights.
Figures for tax revenues generated by private aircraft at Van Nuys are not available, but the city as a whole earns about $2.2 million annually.
A hangar for Disney’s jet is to be built on a site operated by Raytheon Aircraft Services, said airport spokeswoman Stacy Geere. The site is exempt from a building moratorium imposed on new construction at the airport since 1993, pending adoption of an airport master plan.
Officials at Raytheon and representatives of the Disney family declined to say when the hangar will be built, when the new airplane is expected to arrive or any other details of the move.
However, Geere pointed out that the new airplane falls within the category of the quietest jets now being manufactured to reduce noise impacts on neighborhoods.
