El Toro, Cont’d
We are going to Phoenix for a family gathering. From John Wayne Airport to Phoenix, the best available weekday round trip fare is $535.50. The America West agent who quoted the fare said, “John Wayne is a really restricted market.” She said it twice, and she suggested that I fly out of another airport like Ontario.
I selected Long Beach, where the airline offers five non-stop flights a day to Phoenix. The fare, for the same dates and times, is only $106.50. Needless to say, I’m annoyed by the Orange County fare being five times as much.
There is nothing magic about Long Beach, or Ontario. Like John Wayne, they each have lots of excess capacity. But at these other airports, the airlines are allowed to fill their planes and they do it by offering better fares to attract passengers. However, at John Wayne there are artificial restrictions on airline service, negotiated by the county and Newport Beach, that keep airplane seats empty and jack up the price we all pay for our tickets.
The flight to Phoenix is a short trip that can be made with relatively quiet planes. In the hour between noon and 1 p.m., when we chose to depart, only eight commercial flights leave John Wayne, which is nothing for a modern airport with 14 gates. Allowing the airlines to serve more passengers at this time of day would not place a noticeable noise burden on the surrounding community.
We don’t need another costly county airport at El Toro. If there is local demand for more airport capacity, which I question, we just need to be sensible about using the airports we already have. Unfortunately, Newport Beach is seeking to extend the current John Wayne restrictions until 2025, and the Board of Supervisors is helping them. It makes no sense.
Leonard Kranser
Editor
El Toro Airport Info Site
Dana Point
I read with partisan interest your Dec. 11 commentary, “Such a Deal.”
Your key point seems to be that if the proponents of the proposed El Toro airport can’t convince the South County residents, or for that matter these days, the majority of OC residents, on the merits of such an airport, then let’s just buy their silence with a “few thousand dollars.”
Apparently, your comment seems to imply that if the residents of South County are too stupid or selfish to understand the clear benefits of having an airport next door to them and having jets flying a thousand feet over their homes and schools, then perhaps they are stupid enough or selfish enough to think a “few thousand dollars” will improve their quality of life enough to suffer with the airport noise and pollution.
Something else you argue that has bothered me about the rhetoric used by the proponents of the airport to convince Irvine residents that we will never have a plane flying over Woodbridge, Westpark or Oak Creek: “There will no flights to the west over Irvine.” If the county really intends for this to be the case, a “promise” not really possible since it is the FAA, ATC and pilots’ decision during flight operations, why hasn’t anyone proposed to eliminate the east-west runway and only have the north-south runways paved? No other commercial airport in Southern California offers runways that extend in different directions.
Intellectually, I disagree that Orange County needs another airport for the following reasons:
n Except during the busiest of times, John Wayne is not very busy and can easily handle more flights spread through the duration of the day.
n While LAX is very busy and user-unfriendly, it serves all of OC’s needs for international flights. (How often does any non-negligible percent of OC residents fly internationally more than two to three times a year, anyway?)
n Ontario airport is a very easy, non traffic-filled drive for every resident of Orange County and presents a very user-friendly and uncrowded option to LAX for domestic flights. There is no traffic heading to it in the morning or back to OC in the afternoon; I know as I do it a couple of times per month.
Bret Daniels
Irvine
The latest gambit from the airport advocates is to “conciliate” to a 14-MAP airport.
George A. & Co. has forgotten that many of us have been in this debate since Day 1 and we have saved their newspaper clippings. Their original argument in mid-1994 promulgates “…Orange County must have a 38-MAP full-service 24 hour International Airport, or we will not prosper …”
This was their recurring theme to counter accusations that El Toro was merely a Newport Noise Abatement Program. Now, since John Wayne will not be returning to its original size, servicing only single engine prop planes, they are willing to merely reduce it’s impact by “settling” for yet another “small” airport across town. But all of the real issues remain: “nose-to-mountain” take-offs, excessive auto/airplane air and noise pollution, costly runway repair and toxic soil issues, high influx of low-wage jobs, “Inglewood syndrome” home values, a landscape littered with overpasses, hotels, car rental agencies and multi-level parking structures and finally, 67% of OC residents do not want a commercial airport at El Toro.
Dave Mulnard
Director, HR
Tustin
