"Burbank Airport: Safety First, Not Politics"

Sunday, December 10, 2000

Safety First, Not Politics
The Los Angeles (CA) Times


     The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority last week proposed ways
to head off disaster should a plane overshoot the runway, as happened last
March. That no one was seriously injured then seemed a miracle. A Southwest
Airlines 737 began its descent late and fast and crashed through a barrier,
skidding to a stop on busy Hollywood Way and narrowly missing a gas station.

     Airport officials want to install a special paving material that would
stop or slow planes, move some parking lots farther from the runway and
acquire and demolish the gas station. The city of Burbank should do all it
can to expedite the airport's application to buy the properties and relocate
the parking lots. Safety should not depend on miracles.

     But for the city to move quickly on this may require something of a
miracle itself.

     Burbank officials in July made establishing a safety buffer one of
their conditions for allowing the Airport Authority to build a new terminal.
But talks broke down and the Burbank City Council has seemed in no hurry
since to consider any airport proposal.

     This is particularly disappointing because just last year the two
sides, after decades of disagreement, reached a breakthrough accord on
building the badly needed new terminal. Unfortunately, around the same time
the plane skidded off the Burbank runway, the Federal Aviation
Administration nixed a key provision in the framework plan. The FAA said
that the airport would have to undertake a lengthy federal noise study
before imposing a mandatory curfew, a requirement the agreement tried to
skirt by simply shutting down the terminal at night.

     The Airport Authority has begun the study. But instead of trying to
salvage the framework plan, the Burbank City Council made new demands for an
even smaller terminal and for growth caps and noise controls. And, stung by
criticism from die-hard airport opponents for negotiating at all, council
members put an initiative on last month's ballot amending the Municipal Code
to require voter approval of any agreement to expand or relocate the
terminal. The measure passed.

     Which brings us to the stick offered last week by the Airport Authority
along with the carrot of runway safety buffers.

     The authority floated the idea of building a new terminal on land
already owned by the airport rather than on the former Lockheed Martin site
proposed in the earlier agreement. Airport officials suggested the
alternative site in part because they are required, at Burbank's insistence,
to put the Lockheed Martin land on the market now that the agreement has
fallen apart. The Airport Authority says it can't count on reaching a new
agreement with Burbank officials in time to stop a sale.

     The Airport Authority claims that building a terminal on the
alternative parcel would require less city oversight because that land,
unlike the Lockheed site, is already designated for airport use. In other
words, the city would have much less leverage than it has now--which the
Airport Authority hopes will prod Burbank to reconsider the Lockheed
proposal.

     The larger Lockheed Martin site is the better location; it allows more
design flexibility and easier access and would put the terminal a generous
distance from the runways. (The existing terminal is too close to meet
modern safety standards.) But Burbank officials, who are not above using the
impending Lockheed sale to pressure the airport for concessions, refuse to
be pressured in turn. "If they're thinking that they can circumvent all the
city's concerns and powers with their new application because it's on land
that they already own, they're in for a long fight," Burbank Mayor Bill
Wiggins told The Times.

     With a primary election only months away, it seems unlikely that the
airport-averse City Council is going to be looking for a way out of this
stalemate, much less taking as courageous a stand as it did last year when
it forged the framework agreement.

     But surely it risks nothing by agreeing to runway safety buffers. To
relegate this proposal to the same endless holding pattern as the
terminal--or worse, to make it a bargaining chip as well--would once again
emphasize the shamefully small role safety plays in this debate.

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