Plan Would Ease Noise in Cities Northwest of El Toro

More than 150 daily flights leaving north from the proposed El Toro airport would be forced to make a right turn over foothills on their way to the ocean, county officials said in documents released Friday.

It’s the first time county officials have acknowledged that because of air-traffic congestion, some northerly takeoffs would need to be modified to avoid sending planes over heavily populated areas.

Gary Simon, executive director of the county’s El Toro office, said in a July 7 letter that the county will require a right-hand turn “whenever possible.”

The change would eliminate the need for some planes to make left-hand turns over Villa Park, Tustin and Orange.

Officials in those cities had worried that the left-hand turns would cause noise and pollution problems.

The proposed takeoff pattern “avoids overflights and helps to minimize noise impacts and community disturbance in communities to the northwest of [El Toro] that would oppose left turns,” Simon wrote to Paul Gallis, the Federal Aviation Administration’s deputy associate administrator for airports in Washington.

The proposed route would send planes through largely undeveloped areas in the eastern foothills.

County officials originally planned for one-third of all planes from El Toro to take off to the north in a straight line.

But airspace studies in the past year questioned that route, saying the airspace is too saturated with private planes and commercial jets preparing to land at other airports.

The straight-north departure for El Toro has been branded unworkable and unsafe by the nation’s airline pilots’ unions and air-traffic controller representatives.

Planes heading north would cross paths too close to jets arriving into John Wayne and Long Beach airports, critics said.

They also would be competing with private planes using a popular flight route above the Riverside Freeway. Spacing planes far enough apart for safety probably would result in flight delays.

Simon said in his letter that turning planes to the right and off to the ocean will make traffic flow more efficiently.