New El Toro Numbers Add Up to More Delays

Every flight preparing to land at John Wayne and Long Beach airports would be delayed 15 minutes to make room for each northbound jet leaving an El Toro airport, new figures released Saturday by the Federal Aviation Administration show.

Orange County’s plans for an airport at the closed Marine base--calling for hundreds of daily northerly departures--also could delay cargo flights arriving at Ontario International Airport, according to the analysis, a supplement to last week’s study and requested by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach).

The information supplements an FAA report released last week on the impact on Southern California skies of adding an airport at El Toro. The proposed facility is envisioned as the second-largest commercial airport in the region, after Los Angeles International.

Last week’s FAA review determined that El Toro could be operated safely under Orange County’s design. But the review analyzed the passenger load only for the first year the airport would be open, or 4 million passengers. Even then, the report said that as many as 24 daily arrivals into John Wayne and Long Beach airports would be delayed for eight minutes to allow northerly flights to leave El Toro safely.

Cox asked for the additional study because the county plans a much bigger airport at the base. Orange County supervisors are expected to vote Tuesday on an airport plan that could handle 28.8 million passengers annually, with the terminal initially built for 18.8 million passengers.

The additional analysis didn’t address the safety issues at a larger airport, or whether the FAA would allow that level of disruption to the air traffic system. After safety, the agency is responsible for protecting airspace efficiency.

Supervisor Chuck Smith, an airport supporter, said the county could decide later to change traffic patterns as flight volume increased. The county now plans to land planes from the south, with two-thirds of takeoffs to the east and the rest to the north. But “we might want to change [later] for takeoffs to the south and land from the north,” he said.

“The flow is a workable thing,” Smith said. “The safety factor was what we were worrying about.

Cox disagrees. The county’s airport proposal “is unacceptable as is,” he said Saturday. “The significant delays forecast for El Toro, John Wayne and Long Beach [airports] would be completely unacceptable to Southern California travelers.”

Moreover, the FAA has made “no representations about safety beyond 2005,” Cox said, which is when the 4-million-passenger level would be reached, coinciding with the first year of the new terminal.

Board Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad said Saturday that she hadn’t seen the new analysis but didn’t expect it to change her support for the existing airport plan. “Since I’m not an expert, I’m going to wait for an expert to interpret it,” she said.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said an expert isn’t needed for what should be common sense. Accommodating El Toro would bog down flights across Southern California so dramatically that it “would be faster to drive” to destinations, he said.

Changing Details Later Is No Good, Spitzer Says

Spitzer, one of two supervisors opposed to an airport at El Toro, said he expects his pro-airport colleagues to use the information to eventually justify ending commercial flights at John Wayne Airport. The county’s airport handled 7.8 million passengers last year and has about 100 daily departures. Long Beach Airport is capped at 41 daily departures.

“These numbers are the fatal flaw everybody’s been talking about” in the airport plan, Spitzer said. “To say, ‘We’ll figure out this stuff later,’--that’s not a satisfactory statement.”

Airport supporters have focused on the FAA’s determination of safety in the previous study. In a letter sent last week to supervisors, Rep. John Mica (R-Florida) praised the pronouncement of safety and encouraged the FAA to redesign Southern California airspace to make El Toro a better fit.

It was Mica who delayed the release of the initial FAA report because he wanted a meeting first to discuss it. The report was dated Aug. 29 but was released last week after Mica’s briefing.

The analysis showed that most airspace problems posed by El Toro come from northerly flights. Those takeoffs potentially come near the paths of planes preparing to land at John Wayne, Long Beach, LAX and Ontario, according to the county’s environmental review. The nation’s two airline pilots unions have complained about takeoffs to the east, saying it is dangerous for flights to ascend over hills.

Villa Park Councilman Robert E. McGowan, a retired commercial pilot and air-traffic controller, has proposed eliminating El Toro’s east-west runways and sending all departing planes to the south. Planes would land from the north under his proposal, which he and engineer Charles Griffin have placed in an initiative they hope to bring before county voters later this year.

El Toro airport foes said they will demand that county supervisors address the delay and safety issues before they proceed Tuesday with approving El Toro’s final environmental review. Once that review is approved, the federal government can complete its assessment of the county’s plan and decide whether the 4,700-acre base should be turned over to the county at no cost.

Not all of the base would be used for the airport. About 1,000 acres would be preserved as wildlife habitat and 770 acres would become a regional park.