Valley residents pressure airport authority to end Hollywood Burbank noise
Residents from the south San Fernando Valley remain unhappy with the speed in which the Hollywood Burbank Airport is addressing aircraft noise.
About 60 residents who live southwest of the airport told the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority Monday they need immediate relief in their neighborhoods, which for two years have been inundated with aircraft noise from departing flights.
An October 2018 report compiled by consulting firm Landrum & Brown determined that departing flight paths have shifted south — from over the 101 Freeway to above Studio City and Sherman Oaks.
Many of those in attendance yelled at the board, telling members to shutter the airport’s 14 gates and stop adding flights.
“I am tired of these [expletive] airplanes flying over my [expletive] house,” Studio City resident David Kimball said.
Patrick Lammerding, deputy executive director of planning and development, gave an update on a task force that would, airport officials hope, sway the Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines from sending aircraft over that part of the Valley.
He said the task force would potentially be comprised of elected officials or representatives from Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena, as well as from Los Angeles districts 2, 4, 5 and 6.
Lammerding added that membership requests were sent to the offices of U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) and Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles), as well as U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.
In addition to forming a task force, the airport authority on June 17 passed a resolution asking the FAA to reroute departing flights away from Studio City.
However, many Studio City residents argued that a task force was unnecessary and that the flight paths need to be changed immediately.
Studio City resident Stacey Slichta offered the authority a solution — require planes to take off at a steeper ascending rate and make turns toward the north, above the 101 Freeway instead of the south San Fernando Valley.
“No one living under the current path disseminated from our community should accept anything less than this solution,” she said. “Jets should not be flying over the Santa Monica mountains. Jets should not be flying down Ventura or Moorpark either. Planes have flown well north of the 101 in the past and in the present. One hundred percent of [flights] should be done this way, immediately and now.”
Lisa Carloss, a Studio City member of a grassroots group called UproarLA, labeled the task force a stalling tactic, adding that members of the public should be on the committee.
“To come up with a possible solution in 7½ month’s time, that’s not working for anybody in this room,” Carloss said.
Several other Studio City residents referenced a video from an authority meeting on June 15, 2015, in which the board was warned then of the possible effects the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System, known as NextGen, would have in the region once implemented.
NextGen is a satellite-based navigation system the federal agency has been rolling out nationwide as a way to improve time and fuel efficiency.
Dan Feger, the former executive director of Hollywood Burbank who retired in 2018 after 30 years at the airport, said the airlines should to tell their pilots to abandon their navigation system during departures and manually fly out of the airport at a higher climb rate.
“I believe this procedure would help restore the status quo that existed prior to March 2017,” Feger said.
