Raising caps will reveal true demand Recent...

Raising caps will reveal true demand

Recent comments about the planned El Toro airport have swerved

into comments about tiny John Wayne Airport, which, it seems, is

always at capacity, except when the cap is raised (“Looking at El

Toro in a historical context,” Tuesday).

Recently, John Wayne Airport has been growing at 10% per year.

When John Wayne Airport approaches its cap, it will have to be

managed to prevent it from going over the cap and closing. Many

people are familiar with this management, which consists of raising

fares, changing flights and generally making travel there less easy,

yet some will never get it, such as the mouthpieces for the housing

industry.

This process, of raising the cap, managing the cap and raising it

again, has gone on for many years, leading to the widely accepted

need for the planned El Toro airport. When the flights begin at El

Toro, the cap will be 30 million annual passengers, and once and for

all we will finally find out what the demand in Orange County really

is, not to mention competition, which will lower prices and provide

more destinations.

DONALD NYRE

Newport Beach

Fight is over; name-

calling should be too

On July 13, the Pilot published a letter, “Compliments, not

competition needed in airport discussion,” from Newport Beach

resident Dan Emory, calling me “the Darth Vader of South County ...

the enemy personified.” On August 3, the Pilot published a letter,

“Looking at El Toro in a historical context,” from Newport Beach

resident Larry Root, calling me “a mouthpiece for the real estate and

building industries,” which is absolutely false. Root continues:

“Kranser is not really a Darth Vader but is more like Willy Loman, in

Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman.’” It is sad that some Newport

Beach residents still resort to name-calling against private citizens

who oppose building a round-the-clock El Toro airport near their

homes. It is even sadder that the editorial staff of the Pilot

encourages this conduct by selecting their letters for publication.

The El Toro fight is over. The Southern California Assn. of

Governments has adopted a regional transportation plan for the next

26 years that maintains the John Wayne caps and does without an

airport at El Toro. It is time for cool heads to work together on

making it happen.

LEONARD KRANSER

Dana Point

County-wide airport solution is needed

I’m bemused by Larry Root’s accusation in his Tuesday letter,

“Looking at El Toro in a historical perspective,” that I have a

“short memory” and an “incomplete understanding” of the problem.

I first became actively involved in limiting John Wayne Airport

back in 1964. It was as ineluctable then as it is now that until

there was a long-range solution to the county’s air transportation

needs, a steady growth in jet operations at John Wayne was a

certainty.

Our strategy was to buy time through our successful effort to

obtain a binding agreement to limit jet flights until an adequate

alternative to John Wayne could be found.

I regret the loss of El Toro as much as Root, but that’s water

under the bridge. We must now look forward, not back. The new

strategy must be to develop a countywide consensus on a permanent

solution while continuing to limit John Wayne. To form such a

consensus, we must quickly make peace with South County, and the

first step in that endeavor is to cease the inflammatory exchanges,

as well as any further futile attempts to revive El Toro.

I’m even more puzzled by Root’s claim that the Airport Working

Group “represents 80%” of the county’s population. If that were true,

the group’s lead role in attempting to defeat Measure W would have

been successful.

The working group represents the people who live under the flight

path. It’s implausible to think such a group is best qualified to

play a lead role in the formation of the urgently needed county-wide

consensus among all the air transportation stakeholders.

DAN EMORY

Newport Beach