City Limits Number of New, Noisy Van Nuys Jets

The Los Angeles City Council moved Tuesday to sharply limit the number of new, noisy aircraft that may operate at Van Nuys Airport, pleasing many who had complained of noise for years but falling short of the complete ban sought by some neighbors.

About 50 jets--most built before 1985--are exempt from the ordinance and can continue operating at the airport, the busiest general-aviation facility in the U.S.

Aviation officials feared the measure would handicap business at the airport, a center for private and corporate jet flights. Although the new policy allows existing noisy jets--so-called Stage 2 aircraft--to remain, it tightly limits how they can be replaced with the same kind of plane.

After more than two decades of bitter battles over jet noise, the ordinance left many on both sides unhappy with the outcome.

“Homeowners don’t like it,” said Gerald Silver, president of Stop the Noise, a coalition of 28 homeowner associations. “It doesn’t go far enough.”

Jeffrey Gilley of the National Business Aviation Assn., which has about 50 members based at Van Nuys Airport, said many companies would be squeezed by the restrictions because their fleets include older jets.

Insurance companies won’t want to pay for larger jets for medical flights, added Duke Tonry, who oversees air medical operations for Clay Lacy Aviation. Smaller Learjets are well suited for those jobs, he said.

Some council members also expressed frustration about the ordinance.

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According to the city charter, council members could not amend the proposed ordinance, which was hammered out by the city’s Airport Commission. The council could merely approve or reject the measure, and that left some politicians feeling like their wings had been clipped.

“The Airport Commission approach doesn’t get the job done,” a frustrated Councilman Mike Feuer said. “‘It’s not good enough, but it’s better than nothing.”

Feuer and Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski sought greater restrictions, including elimination of all of the older, noisier jets by 2010.

But the two Valley council leaders were both anxious to approve some type of noise limitation, and both agreed on the “interim” wording of Tuesday’s ordinance, holding out hope that the Board of Airport Commissioners would review their request for a “full phaseout of all Stage 2 [aircraft] by 2010.”

Miscikowski said she was particularly irked that the Federal Aviation Administration seems to be working with aircraft operators but not jet-weary residents.

“If there were only one side, we wouldn’t have this problem with us for 25 years,” she said.

One aspect of the new ordinance that doesn’t sit well with many residents is that it allows owners to replace the older, noisier aircraft until Jan. 1, 2011. After that date, all the replacement jets that are not newer, quieter models will be barred from operating out of Van Nuys.

If owners choose not to replace noisy jets, they may, under the ordinance, keep them indefinitely at the airfield.

But some residents seem partially satisfied that some controls would be in place.

Homeowners’ advocate Don Schultz took that pragmatic view. “Each delay only increases the number of noisy Stage 2 jets at Van Nuys while we wait for the perfect legislation, which we will probably never see,” he said.

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For more than two decades the city has struggled to resolve noise problems at the airport and to develop a master plan of land uses to allow for greater compatibility between the airport and neighbors.

Except for the voluntary “Fly Friendly” program, in which pilots utilize techniques to reduce noise, many of the efforts have ended in stalemates.

Fly Friendly records the roar of jets as they take off from Van Nuys Airport. Planes that exceed the target noise level for their type of jet are given a warning.

Airport officials and operators, however, contend that the program has dramatically reduced jet noise at the airport. They say that the area most affected by the din has shrunk from 1.8 to 1.56 square miles since Fly Friendly began in 1994.