The FAA’s Flight Plan
For much of the autumn, the El Toro debate has appeared to be on hold pending a Los Angeles judge’s anticipated ruling on Measure F, the ballot initiative that requires two-thirds voter approval for a commercial airport. But a letter written by the Federal Aviation Administration’s manager of airports in the western region to Supervisor Tom Wilson has stirred the pot on the underlying safety concerns for an airport at the shuttered base.
Herman Bliss recently advised that the FAA was developing preliminary arrival and departure procedures for jets at El Toro, and that it had decided that commercial jets could depart and land safely out of the closed base. This conclusion stands in contrast to an earlier study done by the MITRE Corp. as a consultant for the FAA. That study found the plan was unworkable because airspace to the north already was saturated with jets preparing to land at John Wayne Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Long Beach Airport. The Air Line Pilots Assn. and others have been highly critical of the planning and design of the airport.
Bliss said that the MITRE draft report was only part of a total analysis and should not be thought to reflect final and complete results of the FAA’s evaluation. This appeared to validate a view of Board of Supervisors Chairman Chuck Smith. When the MITRE report became public last summer, he said that it would be premature to comment until the entire study was complete.
Waiting until all the facts are in is prudent. However, Bliss has spread as much uncertainty as clarity by appearing to contradict the MITRE finding in midstream. His Wilson letter didn’t explain how he got from the MITRE report’s finding to his own conclusion.
Bliss did acknowledge Wilson’s request for a copy of the MITRE report and the FAA’s airspace analysis, but said that material could not be released because it was a draft and just one part of the FAA’s total appraisal. In so doing, he seemed to be saying that the FAA analysis was a work in progress, but that he felt free to offer an early and very significant opinion.
What’s apparent is that in its regional office, at least, the FAA seems committed to finding a way to make this proposed airport work. At minimum, rearranging flights to make that happen will be a very formidable task. That undertaking will be complicated by the big unanswered questions still on the table--exactly what kind of airport Orange County finally will give the FAA to review, and whether, if Measure F survives, it will pass muster with voters. Unfortunately, a lot of time has been lost because of the county’s earlier failure to jettison the premise that converting El Toro would be a “turnkey” operation, requiring no major runway overhaul.
Bliss’ boss, FAA administrator Jane Garvey, also has said that such environmental factors as noise from each jet landing or departing, rather than a 24-hour period average, matter in agency review. Here is one planned airport where the community has been torn in a seven-year battle, and where noise in the flight tests of 1999 only aggravated concerns. At the same time, it is no secret that the agency, coming off a summer filled with horror stories about our national experience with flying, is under pressure because of an overtaxed aviation system.
Whatever conclusions are drawn by the FAA, Orange County should expect that they will be explained fully at some point if they can’t be now. Nor should the political imperative of performing surgery on the nation’s air lanes result in any compromise on safe flight patterns.
