Runway Plan at LAX Is Criticized

Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe is warning that any plan to expand Los Angeles International Airport that includes extending a runway into the Westchester business district is unacceptable.

Knabe, whose district includes communities around LAX, praised Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn for taking a new approach to expansion of the airport.

The supervisor welcomed Hahn’s recent statements that he would abandon elements of former Mayor Richard Riordan’s master plan, which called for construction of a new roadway around the entire airport and a large new terminal complex on the west side of LAX.

But Knabe told a meeting of the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum on Friday that he is concerned that other aspects of the Riordan plan are still alive, including extending one of the two northernmost runways. Hahn has not ruled out lengthening the runway closest to Terminals 1, 2, and 3 to 12,000 feet to accommodate the largest jumbo jets.

Knabe, who heads the Southern California Regional Airport Authority, said LAX is the most heavily urbanized airport in the country and has “no place to go” to expand. “We need to be better planners,” he said.

Instead of encouraging growth at LAX, Knabe endorsed a “fair and equitable distribution of air traffic” to airports elsewhere in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. He said the only way to control future growth of passenger traffic at LAX is to press the Federal Aviation Administration to limit the number of takeoffs and landings there.

Hahn has pledged to limit the airport’s capacity to 78 million passengers a year, an increase of about 11 million passengers from the record level last year. Although passenger traffic has plummeted since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Knabe said he expects air travel to bounce back in the future.

He cautioned that improving airport safety and security after the attacks cannot be used as a cover for a major expansion of LAX.