Flight Decisions

* Readers Jack Abrams and Christopher Barnes (“Burbank Airport Controversy,” Letters to the Valley Edition, Jan. 16) object to their being left out of Burbank’s framework for agreement with the airport, leading to creation of a sorely needed new terminal. What they and a handful of other hard-core anti-airport activists really want is a share-the-noise plan requiring some percentage of airline flights to take off to the east, away from North Hollywood and Studio City.

Neither the airport nor air traffic controllers at the Burbank tower decide any airplane’s departure direction. Each pilot makes that decision based on a dozen factors such as the aircraft’s load, power and flight characteristics, as well as wind speed, temperature, runway length, obstacles and distance from his starting point to the start of the runway.

For commercial jets, these factors mean that with a new terminal in the airport’s northeast corner, taking off to the east, starting far from the terminal on the shorter runway and toward 3000-foot-high mountains, is the absolute last possibility any pilot would choose.

Any plan that takes a vital flight decision out of the hands of trained pilots and places it in the hands of politicians cannot possibly produce any good result.

JAMES E. FOY

North Hollywood