El Toro Cleared for Takeoff--Maybe

Weather permitting, a large commercial jet should be lumbering into the El Toro Marine air base at 6 this morning, kicking off two days of flights aimed at showing how noisy the skies could become after the base is turned into an international airport.

But weather predictions late Thursday made the morning arrival of a Boeing 747-400 an iffy proposition.

If it’s scrubbed, the wide-body jet instead will cross into Orange County over Dana Point at about 3,500 feet, descend over Aliso Viejo and Laguna Woods and arrive at 4 p.m. Again, weather permitting.

The unusual Southern California weather this spring is about the only thing that foes of the proposed airport at El Toro can hope for to halt a demonstration they say will fail to prove anything.

Otherwise, an eight-hour stretch of flights begins at 4 p.m. today. Flights on Saturday will be arriving and departing from 10 a.m. through 8 p.m. in the $1.3-million demonstration, which was first proposed two years ago.

Pro- and anti-airport forces are expected to linger near 10 noise monitors sprinkled underneath the lone arrival and two departure paths.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Charles V. Smith, who leads the board’s pro-airport majority, will spend two hours tonight listening to planes leaving El Toro as they pass over near Orange and Portola Hills and as they arrive over homes in Aliso Viejo.

“He really does want to see for himself how loud these planes are,” Smith aide James Campbell said.

Supervisor Tom Wilson, one of two supervisors opposed to the new airport, will spend several hours tonight at a listening party in Laguna Woods, near the Leisure World golf course. Planes will fly directly above the golf course as they prepare for landing.

“People will spend so much time whipping themselves into a frenzy that they probably won’t hear the airplanes,” said David Ellis, a consultant for the El Toro Airport Working Group in Newport Beach, a pro-airport group.

South County opponents Thursday accused county planners again of rigging a whisper-like test by flying lighter-than-normal planes. They noted that the 58 landings and takeoffs over the two days are about the same number expected to use the future airport in two hours.

“The vast majority of people think this’ll be a real test, and it’s not,” anti-airport spokeswoman Meg Waters said.

“The county wouldn’t be doing it if they thought it would really show people what an airport might be like,” said Waters, who represents an eight-city South County coalition fighting the airport.

The weather remains the biggest threat to the test. Pilots cannot fly in low clouds or fog because the Marines already removed equipment for guiding planes in inclement weather.

Flights will be scrubbed if clouds linger below 3,000 feet or visibility is less than three miles, according to FAA rules for flying without instrument guidance.

The weather is so iffy that county planners won’t know until 5:30 a.m. today if the Boeing 747-400 will be allowed to land at El Toro. If not, the plane will be flown to Ontario International Airport and brought into El Toro at 4 p.m. if skies clear.

Updated schedules of the flights, including weather changes, will be available on the county’s Web site at www.eltorofacts.org.

County officials have hailed the test as a way to show South County residents worried about an airport nearby that the noise from new-generation jets won’t be as loud as feared.

The 2,000-acre airport is expected to open with limited flights in 2005 and reach capacity in 2020, handling up to 28.8 million passengers a year. The rest of the base is planned for the county’s largest urban park and land set aside for wildlife habitat.

The Marines will close the base July 2. The property, to be deeded to the county within two years, was earmarked for an airport by a 1994 countywide vote.

Airline pilots opposed to the test, meanwhile, sent a second protest letter this week to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has said responsibility for the test rests with the Marine Corps, which approved the flights in May.

El Toro should be certified first as a “special airport” by the FAA because it is a military airfield and departure routes have not been determined to be safe for commercial planes, argued Jon Russell, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Assn.’s safety committee.

Pilots are worried that heavy wide-body jets could have difficulty on takeoffs clearing Loma Ridge, which rises more than 800 feet about three miles off the northern runway. A military jet transporting soldiers failed to clear the ridge in 1965, crashing and killing 84 people.

The Marines stopped using northern departures after the crash.

A county study last year indicated that jetliners would have no problem clearing the ridge or achieving enough speed on the base’s eastern runway, which slopes uphill.