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See Airport Noise Limits, Debate Grows Over Effect of 'Fly Friendly' Efforts at Van Nuys Airport, and Helicopter Fleet's Relocation Seen as Big Boost for Safety
Please note the writer lives in Santa Monica but claims that the airport is getting quieter and fact about the high noise offenders which or inconsistent with the official airport records listed in the next article. MY may wonder about Ms Jerome's involvement with the airport.
Re "Cap Noisy Jets at Van Nuys," Nov. 21.
The facts in your editorial about Van Nuys Airport are right, but the conclusion is all wrong! You say that "the numbers show that the Fly Friendly program works more times than it doesn't." You say that "some repeat offenders [aircraft operators who exceed target takeoff noise levels] have cleaned up their records," citing one who "has not received a citation since July." You say that "of all the flights departing Van Nuys since February, only 8.4% exceeded the noise limits" and you conclude, based on all this positive information, that "the glass is far more full than it is empty."
Your editorial didn't note, as I discovered when I researched the Department of Airports report myself, that of those who do exceed the target noise limits, only a scant 7.5% are Van Nuys-based operators. That means that only 6 out of every 1,000 takeoffs is a Van Nuys-based aircraft that has exceeded the target noise limits.
The Fly Friendly program is working. The noise contour has shrunk, with the footprint around Van Nuys affecting a smaller area and fewer people. This is clearly due to the fact that Van Nuys-based aircraft operators have made concerted efforts to fly quietly over the San Fernando Valley.
Why punish the people making the greatest effort? The Department of Airports should instead embark on a full-scale effort to educate companies that use Van Nuys Airport but aren't based here. More than 90% of the noise violations come from non-Van Nuys-based companies. We can reduce noise at Van Nuys Airport by educating those companies about our expectations. We can continue to soundproof homes around the airport.
Let's take real steps to solve the problem instead of forcing those who are making an effort to improve bear the brunt of unwarranted and ineffective regulations.
EVELYN JEROME Santa Monica
Upgrade: New site at Van Nuys Airport will improve response time of Fire Department's water-dropping choppers. But officials say more improvements are needed.
By MARTHA L. WILLMAN, Times Staff Writer
VAN NUYS--Calling it a critical safety issue, the Los Angeles Fire Department is taking steps to hoist its fleet of water-dropping and rescue helicopters out of troubled quarters at Van Nuys Airport. The fleet of six airships was moved earlier this month from a cramped ramp to a larger site at the airport half a mile away. By January, the entire air operations crew, as well as the administrative and communications center, is scheduled to relocate into modular buildings on the newly leased 5-acre site.
The larger site allows crews, for the first time in five years, to fill water tanks on helicopters at the airport, rather than having to fly to a water reservoir en route to a brush fire. Until now, they did not have enough room to maneuver water-laden aircraft out of the airport. The new location shaves critical minutes off response time, officials said. "The first step for us for the safety and efficiency of the operation was to move out of where we were and we've done that," said Assistant Fire Chief Dean Cathey, head of the Bureau of Emergency Services.
Funds for the $1.4-million move were scraped together out of the city's current budget by the mayor's office, the City Council and administrative staffs. Officials said immediate steps were needed after voters in April turned down a $744-million public-safety bond measure. The bond would have provided more than $41 million for a new air operations facility.
The city Fire Commission in October approved the action after studies found serious safety problems at the air operations facility. The studies were prompted by several incidents involving fire helicopters, including a crash in March 1998 in which three firefighters and an 11-year-old girl were killed after a helicopter tail rotor assembly failed. Although the National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating those incidents, city studies found that crowded and inadequate facilities could contribute to the wear and tear on helicopter parts.
In a report last month, members of a Fire Department air operations work group concluded that a series of initial steps is "essential to the successful and safe operation of a state-of-the-art emergency / rescue aviation system." It also found that the old helicopter ramp was "dangerously small and inadequate" and presented "an acute clear and present danger of ground and hover collisions with other craft."
A red line painted on the tarmac of the former Air
National Guard site marks the new heliport, which currently consists of only
tie-downs for the helicopters and four fire hoses lying ready to fill
water-dropping tanks. The helicopters are parked next to a wide, concrete
taxiway, allowing pilots plenty of space to maneuver aircraft during takeoff and
landing, far from adjoining neighborhoods.
"This clear space is really heaven sent for
us," said pilot Paul Shakstad, gesturing toward the taxiway. A
28-year-veteran with the department, Shakstad said he watched in chagrin over
the past decade or so as development steadily encroached on the old heliport,
built in 1970 on a 3.6-acre site.
"We no longer had safe approach and departure paths," he said. A Home Depot, built directly north of the old heliport, will soon expand, and an airport business has relocated directly east. A temporary trailer with bunks for two pilots is parked at the new heliport site, while quarters for the rest of the team, as well as the operations center, remain in the old building. Crews currently race to their helicopters in a pickup truck to answer a call. The temporary trailer, dubbed "Ice Station Zebra" because of its remote location, will be replaced when modular buildings are erected, officials said.
The recent steps are only the first of improvements that officials say are sorely needed to improve the aerial firefighting and rescue operation. Ultimately, the city hopes to lease 20 acres of the Air National Guard site [Which is owned now by the Department of Airports which is in turned owned by the City!] for a full heliport and maintenance facility.
The proposed facility would include separate hangar and maintenance space and centralization of other services, such as stationing paramedics at the airport and relocating fire engines designed to handle plane crashes. Paramedics currently must be summoned from other fire stations miles from the airport, causing delays in responding to emergencies. The engine crash unit is based at a station on the opposite end of the airfield from the helicopter operations.
Funds for those improvements, targeted for completion in the next five years, have not been identified. Cathey said several options are being considered, including another attempt to win voter approval of a bond measure. "But there are other funding sources," he said. "Our challenge is to be creative."
Debate Grows Over Effect of 'Fly Friendly' Efforts at Van Nuys Airport
By SUE FOX, Special to The Times
VAN NUYS Half a mile past the end of the runway at Van Nuys Airport, a small microphone juts skyward, steadily recording the roar of jets as they take off above. On cool mornings and blazing afternoons, beneath clear or overcast skies, it distinguishes between a "friendly" takeoff--one that aims to keep noise down for the sake of neighbors--and a not-so-nice departure.
If a plane rumbles into the heavens at a decibel level above the target set by Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that runs the airport, the operator is sent a warning letter. But critics say the voluntary "Fly Friendly" program has had scant effect among a group of repeat violators--including business and entertainment leaders like Barron Hilton, chairman of Hilton Hotels Corp., Jeffrey Sudikoff, former owner of the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, and television producer Steven Bochco, co-creator of "NYPD Blue." To airport critics who bristle at the notion that business moguls and movie stars jet out of Van Nuys at the expense of the common folk below, some aviators respond that easy access to air travel is vital to Los Angeles.
"People that make huge investment decisions need to have access, because their time is valuable," said Stephen Ramsden, president of Jet West International, the company that racked up more citations than anyone else at Van Nuys Airport--85--in less than two years.
Because the program is voluntary, it imposes no fines or other penalties. With the Los Angeles City Council poised to consider tightening restrictions on loud jets later this month, the debate over noise at Van Nuys Airport--long a complaint of nearby residents--has taken on renewed urgency. "This would be like the police department issuing traffic tickets to speeders, but all they are, are notices saying, 'Don't do it again.' It's not even a slap on the wrist, because there are no penalties," said Gerald Silver, a fierce opponent of airport noise and president of Homeowners of Encino, which issued a report on the citations last week." To me, this makes a bold statement that voluntary programs such as Fly Friendly are not working and that regulations are needed," he said.
Airport officials and operators, however, contend
that the program has dramatically reduced jet noise at the airport. They say the
area most affected by the din has shrunk from 1.8 to 1.56 square miles since Fly
Friendly began five years ago.
And they are quick to point out that most of the
complaints about noise--filed chronologically in a thick binder at the
airport--come from Silver and a handful of others.
To reduce noise, pilots can lower their power settings, lessening their thrust while still maintaining altitude. The plane's speed will be reduced, but it will climb skyward faster, whisking its noise away with it. The suggested decibel level varies by plane, depending on aircraft type. A Learjet 25, one of the noisiest jets at Van Nuys, is expected to take off at 103.6 decibels or less, but a newer, quieter Gulfstream 4SP has a target level of 90 decibels.
An air raid siren emits a 140-decibel screech, a jackhammer weighs in at about 130 decibels, and a chain saw registers a 100-decibel roar. And that aggravating alarm clock that jolts you awake in the morning? That's about 80 decibels. The older, louder planes known as Stage 2 aircraft are prohibited from departing Van Nuys between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The quieter Stage 3 planes are not affected by the curfew until 11 p.m.
The Fly Friendly program aims to strike a balance between business imperatives at the country's busiest general aviation airport and homeowner demands for peace and quiet. When airport officials launched it, they tried to come up with target noise levels that half the planes were already meeting, so as to set a reasonable goal that others could achieve. "The limits, as they're set, work well overall," said Stephen Zetsche, who directs the Noise Management Bureau at Van Nuys Airport. "If you make it too hard on the pilots, they may just say, 'I'm not participating.' "
Maurice Laham, the city's airport environmental manager, said he used three measures to calculate the noise limits for each type of plane. First, he combined the guidelines offered by the manufacturer and the National Business Aviation Assn. Next, he tested the planes to see how loud they actually were and then averaged in those figures. The result, like so many of the issues surrounding Van Nuys Airport, was controversial.
Some aviators took issue with the target levels themselves, calling them a flawed measure that discounted variables affecting noise. "When the airplane is full of fuel, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to meet the target level," said Clay Lacy, owner of the largest charter company based at the airport. "The other thing that greatly affects it is the weather conditions. When it's overcast, the noise tends to reflect off the clouds, and that makes it noisier."
Clay Lacy Aviation, in fact, collected the second-largest number of warning letters for exceeding noise levels--67 since February 1998, the most recent period for which the airport has reliable records. But Lacy said large outfits like his are likely to generate more citations because they fly so much. With more than 2,000 departures during the period in question, his pilots only crossed the noise threshold 3.2% of the time. "I think that our pilots are doing an excellent job," Lacy said.
The top three violators, in fact, are all large aviation businesses. Jet West International led the pack, followed by Lacy and then Chrysler Aviation, with 61 warning letters." The basic problem we have in meeting the noise criteria is that we don't think they were effectively set," said Ramsden of Jet West. Nevertheless, he said, the company removed three noisy Learjets from Van Nuys and invested in the development of new "hush kits" to muffle the roar of older planes.
Despite the high number of citations since February 1998, Jet West and Chrysler both met the noise targets most of the time. Jet West received warning letters for 6.6% of its takeoffs and Chrysler got them for 6.9% of its flights. Overall, 8.4% of Van Nuys departures exceed the noise limits. "The program clearly is a success, but we can do better," said Coby King, a Encino resident who is a member of the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council. "It has clearly reduced, in a perceptible way, the amount of noise that the airport's neighbors are subjected to. On the other hand, I would be the first to say that 8% out of compliance is 8% too many. Maybe flights that can't take off safely within the Fly Friendly parameters shouldn't originate at Van Nuys."
Some repeat violators overshot their assigned noise levels on at least every other flight. Two of the worst were Art Goodwin, Hilton's personal pilot, whose Cessna Citation V Ultra triggered a warning letter for 55 of its 93 departures, and Hubert Guez, a clothing manufacturer whose Rockwell Sabre-60 exceeded the noise limit on 43 of 54 takeoffs.
Both Goodwin and Hilton declined comment, but Guez's pilot, David Gregg, said that after receiving a stack of letters from the airport, he has used a lower power setting during takeoffs to lessen the noise. He has since cleaned up his record, with no citations since July. "We've been flying out on the ragged edge," Gregg said. "We're flying very slowly in order to climb as rapidly as possible, which is not the normal way to fly an airplane. We put ourselves at greater risk if we lose an engine."
Other planes with frequent violations include a Gulfstream 3 owned by Bochco and a Westwind-1124 owned by Sudikoff. The planes generated 26 and 48 warning letters respectively. Sudikoff and a spokeswoman for Bochco referred questions about the planes to the firms that operate them, which did not return calls.
Another noisy plane belongs to Dr. Bernard Salick, the founder of Salick Health Care, a $438-million company that runs hospital-based cancer centers and kidney dialysis clinics. Clay Lacy said his firm operates that plane, a Gulfstream 3, and added that it was noisy because it was often bound for Europe with a full load of fuel.
Two other aircraft operators with multiple noise citations, G.L. Nemirow of Burbank and Hadid Development Corp. of McLean, Va., could not be reached for comment.
Laham, the airport official who helped design the Fly Friendly program, acknowledged that there is a group of aviators--"problem guys," in his words--who repeatedly exceed the noise levels and receive a warning, only to exceed the threshold again a few days later." It's highly skewed to a certain group of fliers," he said. But under federal law, the airport cannot make the program mandatory without an extensive, costly study by the Federal Aviation Administration. Imposing a fine is also out of the question, Laham said.
"We can't fine them, because supposing they pull back on the power, lower the nose, barely increasing the power to increase altitude," he said. "If the engine coughed, it's curtains. . . . We never make this kind of rule absolute. Once they're in the air, we don't like to mess around with rules with teeth in them."
The noise complaint hotline at Van Nuys Airport registers dozens of gripes per month, but many of them come from the same cluster of residents. In September, the most recent month for which records are available, there were 90 complaints. But 42 of them came from Silver, the Encino homeowners group president, according to airport records. Another regular, Wayne Williams of Sherman Oaks, faxed the airport 10 complaints in a single week that month.
Airport officials said the complaints don't always correlate with takeoffs that exceed the noise levels. In fact, a few planes that garner frequent warning letters are the quieter, newer Stage 3 aircraft. Their target decibel levels are lower than the targets set for older Stage 2 planes. Much of the controversy at Van Nuys has centered around the noisier Stage 2 jets. On Nov. 23, the City Council is slated to consider a ban on adding new Stage 2 planes at the airport and phasing out the right to replace those already there.
In the meantime, a flurry of
Fly Friendly form letters will keep urging those who persist in flying noisily
to keep it down.
"I think the non-addition rule will
help," said Laham, who sometimes goes so far as to call the offending
aviators.
"I call them, and we have a nice
conversation," he said. "Then I send them some more letters."
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