Airport Project

Re “Burbank Airport,” Letters to the Valley Edition, June 20.

[Linda] O’Connor apparently has misinterpreted the data on aircraft flights in the Environmental Impact Statement for the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport’s terminal modernization project.

She said there are currently 190,000 flights annually (actually it’s 181,675), or 520 per day (actually 498) and said they would grow to 283,000 annually and 775 per day. Inadvertently or not, she implies that this is all airline activity. Not so. Only one-third of Burbank’s overall flights are by airlines. The rest are by small cargo or private propeller-driven planes, business jets and helicopters.

Since two-thirds of all airplanes using Burbank Airport have nothing to do with the passenger terminal, it is purely folly to argue that the terminal will cause them to occur. A new terminal isn’t going to “allow’ any more flights than would occur with the old terminal. However, it would provide a higher level of service and safety to the traveling public.

A note on O’Connor’s lament over the forecast for 283,000 annual aircraft movements: Only a fraction of that--about 104 daily takeoffs compared to 85 today--will be airline flights. Burbank Airport hosted 293,000 aircraft operations in 1978, with less terminal space than today. Can the future be that frightening if it holds 10,000 fewer flights than 20 years ago?

VICTOR J. GILL, Public Affairs and Communications Director, Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority