Letters: Clash over LAX

Re “Move the runway already,” Editorial, April 28

The Times’ nonsensical editorial advocating moving the northernmost runway at Los Angeles International Airport 260 feet closer to Westchester gives no cogent reasons for its position. The message is “just do it.”

History? It doesn’t matter to The Times that in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Westchester lost much of its downtown and thousands of homes and residents to LAX expansion. Also unmentioned is the onetime official plan to develop the “Palmdale Intercontinental Airport” after LAX reached 40 million annual passengers (it served more than 60 million last year). Seemingly ignored is Los Angeles World Airport’s control — some might call it choking — of L.A./Palmdale Regional Airport and L.A./Ontario International Airport.

Therefore, I won’t appeal for fairness. I will appeal to common sense. Moving the runway north will waste half a billion dollars and merely move the choke point from the runways to the taxiways — and nothing more.

Carole Hossan

Ft. Collins, Colo.

The slow death of Ontario Airport is no joke to those of us who live in the Inland Empire. Years of mismanagement by the agency that owns LAX and Ontario Airport have led to airlines abandoning the facility.

Ontario Airport has been sacrificed for the good of LAX; this is why a consortium of cities out here has been pushing for local ownership of the airport and may even sue to force the sale. Thousands of passengers are forced to drive to LAX to get decent flights, clogging already full freeways and adding to local pollution. What sense does that make?

Your unfunny joke about the name of the airport confusing geographically inept airline passengers underlines the problem: Ontario is not being taken seriously. So before trying to do anything else with Ontario Airport, take it and the needs of Inland Empire residents seriously.

Barbara Marmor

Riverside

The Times provides several reasons for not moving the runway, and yet asks the Los Angeles City Council to approve the project anyway (which it did Tuesday). The reasoning escapes me but seems to include three arguments:

The runway issue is merely symbolic.

Neighborhood activists would wish the airport into the Pacific Ocean.

Nearby residents don’t understand the importance of LAX to our community, particularly regarding tourism and other local businesses.

In fact, the Westchester Neighbors Assn. has consistently supported airport modernization. But moving the north runway 260 feet closer to our community would wipe out a chunk of the business district on Sepulveda Boulevard, including the businesses that support tourism.

The Times even acknowledges that traffic concerns in relation to a runway move are real but says that mitigation studies should be delayed.

I can only conclude that your regular editorial staff had the day off.

Susan Wilber

Los Angeles

Ontario a “wind-swept wheat field somewhere in central Canada”? You might be thinking of Saskatchewan but surely not the most populated province of Canada, which is Ontario, with its many fine research universities and colleges.

The carefully planned development and mass-transit system of the very cosmopolitan city of Toronto have been studied by no less than our estimable Los Angeles County supervisors and are regarded as world class.

Ingeborg Quaglino

Los Angeles

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