Pilots Union to FAA: Show How El Toro’s Safe

The nation’s largest union of airline pilots is challenging a Federal Aviation Administration position that flights can operate safely from a planned county airport at the vacant El Toro Marine base.

In a letter to the FAA, officials with the Virginia-based Air Line Pilots Assn. International are demanding that a ranking FAA official justify his conclusions that the county’s plans for an airport at El Toro are safe, particularly plans for takeoff patterns.

Hermann Bliss, the FAA’s manager of airports for the Western Pacific region, said in an Oct. 30 letter to Supervisor Tom Wilson that the airport at El Toro could be operated safely despite concerns raised by pilots’ groups and air-traffic controllers. Bliss dismissed an analysis finished in May by an FAA consultant that said planes leaving El Toro couldn’t take off safely to the north because skies are too crowded.

“For them to say this is not a big deal is crazy,” Jon Russell, the pilot union’s regional safety chairman, said Friday. “Northbound departures will create havoc.”

FAA officials have declined to comment on the agency’s analysis of the county’s airport plans, saying final recommendations won’t be released until March.

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County officials, meanwhile, are headed to Washington this week to find out why the Department of the Navy has fallen 18 months behind schedule on completing environmental documents for El Toro. The documents, which won’t be finished until April, must be completed before the base can be handed over to the county.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Chuck Smith said in a letter sent late last month to William Cassidy, the Navy’s assistant secretary, that continued delays over El Toro “play directly into the hands of those opposed” to the airport.

Russell, long critical of the county’s plans, said controversy exists among airline pilots because of the airport’s design, not because pilots don’t want an airport at El Toro. The county’s current plan is unworkable without major modifications, he said, and county and FAA officials have ignored those concerns.

The FAA consultant’s report on El Toro was prepared by the Mitre Corp., which has been hired by the FAA to redesign the nation’s flight paths. It concluded that the airspace to the north of El Toro was so saturated that departures would probably have to be made on a different runway. The report suggested that a change in the departure procedure for northern takeoffs also could address the problem.

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In his letter to Wilson, Bliss said the agency is developing preliminary procedures for arriving and departing planes “that would ensure aircraft are operated safely.”

Talk of new departure procedures set off alarm bells with Robert E. McGowan, an airline pilot and member of the Villa Park City Council. McGowan has proposed reversing the county’s plans for landings and takeoffs, with jets departing to the south and approaching from the north.

McGowan said he fears the FAA may require planes departing to the north to veer left after takeoff, making a U-turn toward the coast away from hills and conflicting flight paths. That would bring jets over Villa Park, Orange, Tustin and Irvine.

“A left turn would be disastrous,” McGowan said last week. “Our community already takes our share of traffic [from arrivals to John Wayne Airport]. I would work against the airport if that happens.”

Such a left-hand turn was in the county’s initial plan for the airport. It was eliminated after an outcry from residents.[