U.S. Opposes Plan to Curb Airport Noise : Aviation: Citing attempts to form a nationwide policy, federal agency threatens to block grants and tax revenues. A City Council panel backs the proposed ordinance anyway.

The federal Department of Transportation threatened Tuesday to use a financial blackjack to block a city anti-noise proposal that would restrict the use of aging jetliners at Los Angeles International Airport.

Despite the warning, a Los Angeles City Council committee recommended approval of the proposed ordinance and forwarded it to the full council.

Dean McGrath Jr., the Department of Transportation’s acting general counsel, told the committee that the ordinance proposed by the city’s Airport Commission would undermine federal attempts to establish a nationwide policy for phasing out the older, noisier jets and would unnecessarily duplicate regulations aimed at accomplishing the same results under a similar timetable.

If the city does not abandon the ordinance, McGrath said, the secretary of transportation might decide to block the airport’s newly gained ability to tax passengers for airport improvements.

These taxes--called passenger facility charges and authorized under federal legislation last year--could generate as much as $70 million a year at the airport, McGrath told the council’s Committee on Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources.

McGrath estimated in a written report that another $70 million in federal grants for Los Angeles and Ontario International Airport projects could be jeopardized.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, a committee member whose district abuts the airport, defended the proposed city ordinance, saying its passage could significantly improve the environment around the airport.

Both she and Clifton A. Moore, the airport’s executive director, noted that the city’s timetable for the phase-out is somewhat quicker than the timetable proposed by the FAA. In addition, they said, the FAA regulations, scheduled to go into effect next month, include waivers that could further prolong the phase-out.

The ordinance proposed by the Airport Commission would require the gradual phase-out of so-called Stage 2 aircraft at Los Angeles and Ontario international airports by the year 2000, making the carriers restrict their operations to quieter, Stage 3 planes. Commercial jetliners are grouped into three stages, based on the levels of noise they generate--Stage 1 the loudest and Stage 3 the quietest.

The first generation of jetliners--planes such as Boeing 707s and Douglas DC-8s--were generally classified as Stage 1 because of the high levels of noise they create. None have been built in more than a decade and their use has been banned at most of the nation’s urban airports, including Los Angeles and Ontario, since 1985.

Most second-generation jetliners--early Boeing 727s, 737s and 747s and DC-9s, DC-10s and later model 707s and DC-8s--fall into the quieter Stage 2 category. Many of these aircraft have been modified with new engines that reclassified them as Stage 3. Manufacturers are no longer building Stage 2 aircraft.

Stage 3 aircraft constitute the latest generation of jetliners--planes like the newer 737s, 747s, 757s and 767s, Lockheed L-1011s, DC-11s and European Airbuses. These jetliners now account for more than 60% of the traffic at Los Angeles International.

Under the city ordinance, individual carriers would be required to have at least 50% Stage 3 planes using Los Angeles and Ontario by Jan. 1, 1994; 75% by Jan. 1, 1996; and 100% by Jan. 1, 2000.

Federal regulations require that 50% of an airline’s fleet be Stage 3 by 1996, 75% by 1998 and 100% by Jan. 1, 2000. The federal rules allow waivers for airlines whose fleets are 85% in compliance by the deadlines, McGrath said.

City officials noted that the federal rules give airlines slightly more leeway in complying, since the FAA quotas would apply to an airline’s entire fleet rather than to its planes using Los Angeles International. The council was directed to consider the proposed ordinance on July 16, the date by which federal regulations are expected to go into effect.