Airport Battle Shifting to John Wayne

By JEAN O. PASCO

May 13, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

With plans for an El Toro airport dead, Orange County’s John Wayne Airport looks like the next battleground in Southern California’s airport wars.

Since 1985, John Wayne has operated under court-approved limitations on traffic and a nighttime flight curfew that dates to 1968. But the agreement covering those restrictions expires at the end of 2005.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors and officials of Newport Beach, whose city is the most affected by noise from John Wayne flights, plan to approve extended--thought slightly softened--restrictions next month. Their efforts are already encountering strong resistance, however.

A spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., which represents the nation’s major airlines, says the trade group will fight attempts to keep restrictions in place.

The group contends that beginning Jan. 1, 2006, the county must stop limiting the number of passengers and departures, as well as the noise restrictions made by departing jets.

“Our position is that once the agreement expires, it expires, and everything referred to in it expires,” said ATA spokesman Roger Cohen in Washington.

The argument over what happens at John Wayne in Santa Ana reaches beyond Orange County. Officials in Los Angeles County had joined the call for a new airport at El Toro, arguing that Orange County wasn’t doing its “fair share” of serving air passengers in California’s second-most populous county.

About 7 million passengers used John Wayne in 2000--a fraction of the 67 million who traveled through Los Angeles International Airport that year. Five million more Orange County passengers began or ended their trips at LAX or Ontario International Airport, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

“If Orange County is going to opt out of El Toro, the immediate answer is John Wayne Airport,” said El Segundo Mayor Mike Gordon, who is active with a coalition of elected officials in Southern California pushing for a regional approach to airport expansion.

“We’re not going to let [Orange County’s] demand wind itself back to LAX. We’ll be doing everything we can with the FAA to make sure John Wayne Airport can expand.”

Orange County’s future airport demand is pegged by SCAG at about 30 million passengers annually by 2025. John Wayne could handle about 14 million passengers a year if more gates were built and the limit on passengers removed, according to an earlier county study.

A majority of Orange County supervisors don’t want John Wayne to grow that much; the airport is one-fourth the size of the scuttled El Toro airport.

In February, supervisors voted to seek an increase in the number of passengers at John Wayne from the current cap of 8.4 million a year to 9.8 million through 2015. The number of flights using the loudest commercial jets would rise from 73 to 85 a day. The county also would build four passenger gates, for a total of 18. It’s this plan that supervisors and the Newport Beach City Council are expected to complete at a June 25 meeting.

The airlines argue that renewed restrictions would violate a 1990 federal law that ended the ability of local governments to control airports. In exchange, airlines agreed to replace their fleets with quieter jets. At the time, restrictions at John Wayne were allowed to continue because they were already in place.

Since the passage of that law, the 1990 Airport Noise and Capacity Act, the Federal Aviation Administration has not approved flight curfews or other significant restrictions on airport operations anywhere in the country.

Newport Beach officials say the restrictions at John Wayne can be amended and extended without approval by the FAA.

“We’ve taken the position that we have a grandfathered agreement that doesn’t need FAA approval,” said Newport Beach City Atty. Robert Burnham. “There will be discussions. We don’t want to go to war with anybody.”

City officials intend to sit down with FAA officials once the city and county agree on a new plan, he said.

Jerry Snyder, the FAA’s Western region spokesman in Los Angeles, said last week that the agency has not yet been asked to comment on the plan and that no meetings to discuss it have been scheduled.

“We haven’t performed any legal analysis to determine the legal standing of any extension proposal,” he said.

Two citizen groups that signed the 1985 settlement agreement that imposed the current restrictions have agreed to accept some growth in airport capacity as long as it can still be restricted, said Newport Beach City Manager Homer Bludau.

Barbara Lichman, attorney for the Airport Working Group, which has opposed John Wayne Airport expansion for more than 20 years, said her organization will fight to allow enforcement of a settlement agreement extended beyond 2005. The biggest threat is to the nighttime flight curfew, she said, which reduces beneath the flight paths.

The county began enforcing the curfew in 1968. Departures are limited to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays. Arrivals are allowed until 11 p.m.

“I hope to God that the agreement prevails,” Lichman said.

The stakes are high for Newport Beach: Should the agreement expire, it would not only end the noise and capacity limits but return authority to the county for other future decisions about the airport.

The city has enlisted the help of Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who last year tried unsuccessfully to attach an amendment to an aviation security bill that would have eased the way for an extension of the John Wayne agreement.

Cox has crafted language similar to that in his failed amendment, and supported by the Orange County congressional delegation, that he said he hopes to add to a future aviation bill.

A review of attempts by other communities to impose airport restrictions, as well as past correspondence between the FAA and the county, indicates an uphill climb.

In a 1994 letter to John Wayne Airport’s then-manager, Jan Mittermeier, an FAA official acknowledged the 1985 restrictions but said future decisions about flights must be “addressed in a manner consistent” with the 1990 federal law barring local restrictions.

A fight to impose similar restrictions at Burbank airport has dragged on for years. The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority is conducting a three-year, $4-million study required by the FAA as part of its attempt to impose a 10 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew for commercial flights.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Keeping the Lid On

Current Proposed

Daily 73 85 as of

flights 1/1/2006

Annual 8.4 9.8

passenger million million

limit

Daily cargo 2 2

flights

Loading 14 18 as of

gates 1/1/2006