THERE’S NEWS, AND THEN THERE’S BURIED NEWS. Judging from the front-page headlines in the daily papers back in August, you would have thought that the FAA was ready to kill the idea of a commercial airport at El Toro. An FAA report had determined that “El Toro’s latest flight plan” was “a no-go” and “unsafe.” The source of these verdicts was a leaked copy of a working draft of a consultant’s report to the FAA; the consultant had found, not surprisingly, that El Toro’s proposed takeoff and landing patterns would conflict with existing flight patterns in the Southern California region.
Not addressed in this “Mitre Report” was the possibility or probability that these conflicts could be resolved. The dailies’ reportage had the predictable anti-airport spin. In this space, yours truly dutifully noted that the problem of conflicting flight patterns appeared to be a manageable one.
Now let’s contrast the August headlines with the scant attention that was given to a much more interesting report that fell into certain reporters’ laps last week, including Peter Brennan’s. This involved the minutes of an Oct. 4 meeting between the top regional officials of the FAA and county officials, including supervisors Chuck Smith and Tom Wilson.
Contrary to the impression left by the August coverage, the minutes portray an FAA staff that is working closely with the county and is proceeding on the assumption that an El Toro airport is doable. One of the dailies gave the disclosure of this report five sentences; as of this writing, the other hadn’t given it any.
It’s hard to sell a pro-airport angle. But facts are facts. So let’s go.
The minutes indicate that the FAA staff sees an El Toro airport as part of the equation for solving air traffic congestion. A staffer is quoted as saying, “The county’s El Toro proposal will be included in the baseline conditions for the Los Angeles basin study.”
FAA staff is also quoted as saying that it has been working recently with the agency’s experts in Oklahoma City to study the airspace issues at El Toro, and that “the FAA can fine-tune the departure proposal to minimize conflicts.”
Moreover, the FAA staff said its analysis was limited to the county’s plan and “there are no westerly departures included in the analysis”(emphasis added). Further, “FAA staff stated that the FAA would make sure the Oklahoma City managers understand and support the flight procedures which have been proposed by the county in response to environmental and community constraints.”
Upon further questioning from anti-airport supervisor Tom Wilson about possible flights to the west, “The FAA staff stated that the FAA relies on the project applicant, the county, to design the airport layout and to propose procedures for FAA approval The design of an airport and procedures is a local issue” (again, emphasis added).
But what if the pilots want to fly west and the county goes along with it? Wilson asked. Even then, FAA staffers responded, the county would have to alter its existing airport plan, and it couldn’t do that until after it obtained conveyance of the land from the Navy.
Sleep easy, Irvine.
Now, there is a sticking point. The FAA staff stated, “It will be a struggle to get aircraft to the north.” Roughly a third of the flights are now planned to take off in that direction, as opposed to two-thirds to the east. The solution is not currently clear.
Nonetheless, the staff repeated that “the airspace conflicts are very limited.” And in a dismissal of the hubbub over the leaked “Mitre Report,” the staff noted “these preliminary draft studies can be misrepresented. The Mitre Report was only a partial report and was not suitable for distribution outside FAA.”
Well, I don’t buy that last part. I think most leaks are plenty suitable for public consumption. It’s just unfortunate when they’re misconstrued. This latest leak helps to clarify matters. In this space, at least.
