Here Comes Jumbo--a First for O.C.

The largest airliner ever to land in Orange County is scheduled to make its debut Friday, touching down just after sunrise at the soon-to-be-vacated Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro.

Workers will scurry to fill the belly of the Boeing 747-400 with sandbags, and to top off its wing tanks with fuel, giving it heft as if it were filled with passengers.

By 7 a.m., the wide-body jet should be ready for takeoff, 203,000 pounds heavier than when it landed.

Then a bizarre thing will happen: The pilot will fly the plane for 12 hours--across the Pacific nearly to Guam and back. The time is needed to burn off enough fuel so the 747 is light enough to return, because runways aren’t strong enough to handle landings with the same weights allowed for takeoffs.

The flight, simulating a trip to Tokyo, is one of more than two dozen round trips planned for this unique two-day Orange County air show, a $1.3-million test of commercial jet noise.

The flights represent an intricate dance of logistics, physics, timing and ballast planned throughout Friday and Saturday. They are aimed at giving South County residents an idea of what it would be like to live near an international airport.

Despite the county’s plans to convert the base to such an airport after the Marines leave July 2, the demonstration isn’t likely to change the minds of those already opposed to commercial flights.

And there’s a chance the test might not get off the ground at all. Two variables beyond the county’s control could put the kibosh on it: a Santa Ana judge and the weather.

Attorneys for the city of Irvine will be in Superior Court at 10 a.m. today to ask Judge Robert E. Thomas to halt the planned demonstration. They argue that the county improperly exempted the test from an environmental review, and that planned northerly takeoffs over Loma Ridge are too dangerous.

Another unknown is clouds and fog. The airline jets are authorized to use El Toro only with clear skies, because the Marines have removed their equipment for guiding pilots in limited visibility.

If a judge’s order or weather jeopardizes the test, it cannot be rescheduled. There simply isn’t enough time before July 2, when the Marine controllers and emergency crews being used for the test will be gone for good.

“It was a difficult project anyway, but, frankly, it was more difficult than we anticipated,” said Alan Murphy, who manages El Toro aviation planning for the county.

Variables aside, airport supporters, and even some opposed to El Toro’s conversion, expressed confidence that the test will proceed and provide valuable information for the entire county.

“There is no harm in doing a test,” said David Markley, an anti-airport commissioner on the community advisory panel for El Toro. “Both sides have something to gain by seeing these planes.”

How Realistic a Test?

Courtney Wiercioch, the county’s project manager for El Toro, said the county jumped through hoops to provide as realistic a test as possible. For example, it cost $277,830 to include the Boeing 747 for one day of the test, even though the plane accounts for only 14 of 823 expected takeoffs and landings a day at El Toro after 2020.

County officials insist that an airport wouldn’t bring excessive noise to South County residents because homes sit much farther from the runways than those near John Wayne Airport or Los Angeles International.

But they concede that the test won’t be used for planning and that it cannot approximate the impact of planes expected to use El Toro every four minutes on average around the clock.

“This will be different from normal [in that] people will be out on their patios listening for the planes, when they normally might be in their kitchen and would never hear them,” Wiercioch said.

Airport foes condemn the test as nothing more than an expensive publicity stunt that will cost the county regardless of what happens, because airlines providing planes and pilots already have been paid. They accused the county of sugar-coating the outcome by flying lighter-than-normal loads along flight patterns that they contend future pilots will refuse to use. County officials concede that some planes will carry lighter loads because the county could not rent those jets long enough for the aircraft to carry and then burn off a full load of fuel.

Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, who initiated the his city’s court action to block the tests, said the county is ignoring the 1965 crash of a military transport jet over Loma Ridge that killed 84 people. The crash ended the military’s use of its northern departure route, the same one planned for use later this week.

“If I were trying to promote an airport, I sure wouldn’t do something like this,” he said.

A county technical analysis last year concluded that current high-performance aircraft would have no problem clearing Loma Ridge, which sits three miles off the end of the northern runway.

The county team that organized the test, led by Murphy, the El Toro aviation planner, said deciding which runways to use was the easy part.

Weather May Interfere

More complicated was finding aircraft that could be rented for a day or two, coordinating the planes to and from the base, figuring out how long it would take to burn enough fuel so returning jets didn’t exceed maximum landing weights, and simulating flights to such destinations as San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Tokyo.

The county also had to work around the schedules of the Marine air traffic controllers at the base. Controllers will work from 6 to 8 a.m. Friday, then take a required eight-hour break and return to work from 4 p.m. to midnight. The same controllers will begin again at 10 a.m. Saturday and work through 8 p.m.

Based on historic weather patterns, there is a 50-50 chance that low clouds will surround the base Friday morning, Murphy said, canceling the Boeing 747’s 6 a.m. arrival. If that happens, the plane will be diverted to Ontario International Airport.

Assuming the clouds burn off later in the day, the plane would arrive at El Toro at 4 p.m., depart an hour later and return for a second arrival at midnight.

There was another wrinkle to deal with: The plane being used for Friday’s final midnight departure is an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-400 that must stay overnight at John Wayne Airport. The county approved a one-time exemption to John Wayne Airport’s nighttime curfew to allow the plane to arrive shortly after midnight.

Updated flight schedules Friday and Saturday will be available on the county’s El Toro Web site, www.eltorofacts.org