CAA: Airport News, "Fight for flight control: Nationwide, battle lines drawn over airports' need to expand vs. neighbors' rights, concerns"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@cwnet.com>]

Sunday, March 5, 2000

Fight for flight control
Nationwide, battle lines drawn over airports' need to expand vs. neighbors'
rights, concerns
By Matthew Brelis
The Boston Globe


LOS ANGELES - In Southern California, the busiest air space in the world,
there are plans for new runways and new airports in an effort to bring a
more regional approach to aviation. There is even talk of a high-speed rail
system to shuttle passengers to and from the San Francisco Bay Area.

And opponents of the projects, searching for allies in the courts and on the
airwaves, are hoping to kill a new airport project at the ballot box
Tuesday.

Los Angeles World Airports, the governmental agency that runs Los Angeles
International Airport (known as LAX) and three other airports, is planning a
$10 billion to $12 billion expansion of LAX to meet forecasted demand that
could see the number of passengers climb to 98 million from 61 million by
2015.

Except for the money involved and the scale, it is just like Boston's Logan
International Airport, which plans to spend more than $3 billion in the next
several years to add terminal space, build a new runway, and improve
regional distribution of flights by drumming up business for Worcester. And
Amtrak is close to unveiling high-speed service between New York and Boston
that could cut down on shuttle flights.

''Our discussions could be the same, with the only difference being the
names,'' said Mike Gordon, mayor of El Segundo, a city of about 16,000 hard
against LAX, where the roar from jets taking off and landing at the world's
third-busiest airport is constant.

The airports in Boston and Los Angeles are just two of more than a dozen
major airports around the country - from Miami to Seattle, from Detroit to
Dallas - planning or constructing runways and multibillion-dollar
improvements. The goals are either to reduce delays - as is the case in
Boston and San Francisco, where there is talk of filling in two square miles
of the bay for a new runway - or to handle the ever-increasing demand for
capacity, or both.

On Thursday, Congress hammered out an agreement to fund the Federal Aviation
Administration and airport improvements by raising the ticket surcharge
levied on each passenger. Under the negotiated agreement between the House
and Senate, the so-called passenger facility charges will rise from $3 per
one-way flight to $4.50, which will bring in another $1.4 billion a year.
The Massachusetts Port Authority, which owns and operates Logan, has not yet
determined whether it will raise its user fees, but officials believe it
could bring in another $18 million a year.

A smoothly operating national aviation system is critical to the country's
economic well-being. The most recent forecast indicates annual passnger
counts to approach 1 billion in 2010, from more than 600 million now.

Modernizing airports - both the terminals and airfields - is the mantra of
politicians and industry officials around the country. Airports pump
billions of dollars into local economies, and decisions on whether to expand
an airport are made, for the most part, locally.

''Modernizing LAX is the only answer,'' said Ezunial Burts, president of the
L.A. Chamber of Commerce. ''Passengers are going to come anyway. We weren't
drumming up business, but this is the gateway to the Pacific. And if nothing
is done it will mean longer lines and delay.''

And for the opposition, whether in Boston or Los Angeles, fighting the
expansion - which invariably means more noise, more traffic, and more air
pollution - almost always means operating in a vacuum.

''All of the battles are fought in isolation,'' says Dennis McGrann,
executive director of Washington-based NOISE, the national organization to
ensure a sound-controlled environment. ''The fights are absent a national
debate.''

Indeed, sometimes it is hard to even come to a regional consensus, let alone
a national one.

While Gordon has filed suit against LAX for making piecemeal improvements to
an airport that he believes should have undergone environmental review, the
dispute over airport expansion is even more bitter to the south in
neighboring Orange County, where the majority of the county supervisors want
to turn El Toro, a 4,700-acre former Marine Corps Air Station, into a busy
commercial international airport. They are doing so in the face of
significant community opposition.

But hoping for a national solution is a pipe dream.

''We can't even get people to look at this regionally,'' said Susan Withrow,
a city councilor in Mission Viejo and an El Toro opponent.

Even officials at the Airports Council International, a trade association of
airports, think there should be more national coordination.

''The Federal Aviation Administration should not take legal responsibility,
but it could do a better job coordinating and looking at the national
capacity needs,'' said Richard Marchi, a spokesman.

The FAA says it cannot take such a leadership role.

''Ideally, from a national standpoint, it would be great if the federal
government could dictate where we will have airport expansion and where we
won't,'' said Paul Galis, the FAA's deputy associate administrator for
airports. ''But we can't. The underlying premise is that airports are local
matters, controlled by local agencies. We are obliged to respond to local
initiatives.''

In fact, the FAA's national airport plan is not so much a blueprint for
where future development should occur to best meet demand, but an inventory
of development plans that are brought to the agency by local governments.
The agency's mandate from Congress, said Galis, is to support new projects
if they make economic sense.

In Orange County, the effort is decidedly local, and it makes the
controversy over Logan's proposed runway look sedate.

Opponents air advertisments on cable television showing body bags from a
1965 Marine crash into a mountainside that killed 84 servicemen and crew
members headed to Vietnam. And more than 80 local clergy have banded
together saying the proposed airport is morally wrong.

''When a highway is built, at least they pay you for your property, but here
there will be 747s flying over our houses,'' said John Steward, pastor of
the Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Mission Viejo. ''To love your
neighbor as yourself is the basis of moral judgment, and if someone lived
elsewhere they would not want it to happen to them.''

Officials pushing the airport conversion say it is needed to preserve the
economic good times in Orange County, maintain the area's competitiveness in
a global economy, and generate jobs.

But numerous safety questions have been raised about the project, and the
Air Line Pilots Association has vehemently opposed the siting of a
commercial airfield there.

''Poor planning, poor design, and less than desirable topography will haunt
this airport indefinitely,'' said Captain John Russell, ALPA's regional
safety chairman, in a Feb. 16 letter to county officials. ''El Toro has very
few redeeming qualities if any at all. Put another way, El Toro is the
antithesis of what one would expect from a state-of-the-art facility.''

Among the problems, John Wayne Airport is a mere seven miles away, and the
draft environmental report prepared by the county said takeoffs from El Toro
would be with a tail wind into rising terrain - a dangerous scenario for
high-performance fighter aircraft, let alone lumbering commercial aircraft.

That point was drilled home to a group of senior citizens meeting at the
Orange Senior Center last weekend, by former Marine Colonel Thomas F.
O'Malley Jr. O'Malley flew KC-130 refueling aircraft out of the base, and
now is working with the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, an agency with a
$6 million budget that is trying to turn the base into mixed residential and
commercial land with open space.

''No one in this room loves to fly more than I do,'' he told the 25 members
of the local chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons. ''And
while it was safe for the Marines to fly out of, it is not safe for the
airlines. I'm not telling you scare tactics. The fact is there is no place
more unsafe than an airport surrounded on three sides by mountains.''

And because John Wayne Airport, also in Orange County but limited in its
ability to grow, is so close, traffic between the two airports will have to
be sequenced by air traffic controllers.

''Fairy dust and a magic wand will not cure the air traffic control issues
plaguing El Toro,'' Russell wrote in his letter.

On Tuesday, Orange County voters will be asked whether they support a ballot
question that would require a two-thirds vote of the population for any
airport, landfill, or jail to be built within the county.

Polls indicate that it is likely the measure will pass.

If the measure passes, airport proponents will probably challenge the
legality of the ballot measure. But no El Toro will exacerbate demand at
LAX, which is already bursting.

The airport had its last major modernization for the 1984 Olympics, when 30
million passengers went through the facility.

The Southern California Association of Governments has estimated that about
160 million passengers will use the region's major airports by 2020, with
about 29 million using Orange County airports, either John Wayne or El Toro,
and about 98 million using LAX.

But opposition to a fifth runway at LAX prompted Mayor Richard Riordan last
summer to put forward a proposal with no new runway, but new terminals. The
proposal included more than $3 billion in ground transportation
improvements, including an airport ring road, a connection to the interstate
system, and an extension of a rapid transit line to the airport.

That plan - which anticipates a major airport at El Toro - would limit LAX
growth to about 89 million passengers and aircraft operations would increase
by only 5 percent instead of 25 percent with a new runway. In order to
handle that increase, LAX may have to reduce the commuter flights - about
one-third of its operations but only 6 percent of the passenger count,
airport officials said.

In an effort to reduce congestion at LAX, the airport hopes to award a
design contract at its next board meeting for an offsite terminal at a
park-and-ride lot in Van Nuys used by 700,000 passengers a year who are
bused to the airport. Under the proposal, passengers would check their
baggage at Van Nuys, receive a boarding pass, and proceed directly to their
gates.

Logan, which has a similar network of buses from suburban locations, has no
immediate plans to check the baggage of bus passengers at remote locations,
but ticketing is available. However, airlines have not been quick to offer
that service.

As delays increase and cost America billions of dollars in lost
productivity, the FAA is working hard to improve the air traffic control
system with technology like global positioning systems.

At San Francisco, where low visibility reduces airport capacity to a single
runway instead of two, one plan is to move a runway into the bay to increase
separation and thus permit simultaneous landings in bad weather.

However, United Airlines and the airport are looking at technology in the
cockpit to increase pilot awareness of other planes in the area. That could
improve the delays at San Francisco when the cloud ceiling begins to drop,
said Marchi of the Airports Council International.

"The thing that I find telling in all this," said Marchi, "is that it is the
airports and carriers trying to develop new procedures. The FAA is more
reactive. They will approve things, but they are not taking the lead in
Boston and elsewhere saying, `What can we do to increase capacity?"'

RUNWAY INFLATION

Boston: Wants to build a 5,000 foot commuter runway, with planes taking off
and landing over the water. Would require no-taking of property.

Los Angeles: Has several expansion proposals, including three which would
build a fifth runway. One proposal does not call for building an additional
runway, but lengthens an existing one and adds taxiways. Project involves
buyout of some residential and commercial property.

San Francisco: Proposal in early stages to build a fifth runway, out into
San Francisco Bay. Designs include floating structure, filling the bay, or
building on concrete pilings.

Miami: Is planning to build a new fourth runway as part of a $5.4 billion
expansion. Officials say it will increase airport capacity by 22 percent.

Seattle: FAA has approved a third runway, and the $773 million project is
expected to be complete by 2006. Project requires the taking of homes.

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