Burbank Airport

Re “Noise Secondary to Safety,” July 4.

It is my belief that although the present terminal is located too close to the runway that the Airport Authority is over-emphasizing this issue in an attempt to ram through a new terminal prior to development of an effective curfew and limits on flights.

The authority has singled out safety as its primary selling point because the other tactics they tried just did not work. As an example, for several years they harped on the idea that a much larger terminal was needed to accommodate increasing demand. From 1996 to 1998, the years in which they tried to sell the increasing demand story, the passenger counts actually dropped.

Since aviation safety is something we are all concerned about, the authority is attempting to induce hysteria about the location of the terminal, which has been in its present location for 60 years. Your editorial did correctly note that the terminal is only 313 feet from the center line of the runway.

What was not noted is that the permanent parking location for the aviation fuel trucks is 331 feet from the center line on the other side of the runway. These trucks could easily be moved to a safer location. For over two years, I have asked the authority to please move them. My pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

I’ll buy into the authority’s safety issue the day it gets really concerned about safety and moves the fuel trucks away from the runway.

RON VANDERFORD, Burbank

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Your editorial is nothing more then the same old red herring that the Airport Authority has been trying to get everyone to buy into for the last 20 years.

Were safety a real concern, then why in 1987 did the authority double the size of the terminal and why are they spending over a million dollars a year of taxpayers’ money in an attempt to get the public to come and use an unsafe airport?

STAN HYMAN, Burbank