Open Airspace Open to Complaints

This month’s closing of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station opened airspace previously restricted to commercial and private planes, prompting a surge in noise complaints from south Orange County residents.

Fifteen callers protested in the past two weeks about jet noise from areas never before affected, including Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel and Lake Forest, John Wayne Airport spokeswoman Nghia Nguyen said Tuesday.

Because of military operations, airspace around the base had been restricted for the past 56 years, until the Marines closed the base July 2. County officials are planning to transform the base into an international airport handling as many as 28.8 million passengers a year by 2020.

Federal Aviation Administration officials confirmed Tuesday that the agency started notifying pilots July 1 that the airspace above El Toro is now unrestricted. However, the agency hasn’t changed any approach or departure patterns, FAA spokeswoman Kirsti Dunn said.

The planes flying near El Toro likely are private pilots taking advantage of the additional airspace in crowded Orange County skies, local pilots said. Some airliners also could be sent to the area to maintain minimum separation distances required for landing at John Wayne Airport, they said.

Maps of flight tracks provided by John Wayne Airport showed no perceptible difference in the routes of commercial airliners flying over South County before and after the base closed. The maps tracked the path of each commercial jet landing and departing the airport on June 30 and July 7.

Still, several South County residents corresponding on an El Toro Internet chat room complained that new aircraft activity disturbed them as early as 6:30 a.m. and well into the night.

“These planes never formerly flew over my house,” wrote Lake Forest resident Ron Steinbach on OCnow.com’s public El Toro chat room. He said the planes were about 3,000 feet above his home.

One writer accused county officials and the FAA of routing planes over South County “as the first stage in sensitizing us to the inevitability of more air traffic looming over our neighborhoods.”

Former FAA regional administrator Don Segner, an aviation consultant in Newport Beach, said some airliners may be using the airspace to “cut the corners” on flight paths as they prepare to land at John Wayne Airport.

But there may be another reason for the increase in complaints, he said: heightened sensitivity to aircraft noise by South County residents opposed to the new airport.

Recent hot weather also has spurred people to open their windows more and to leave them open longer, he said.

“People are more sensitive to noise than they have been in a long time,” said Segner, who lives in Laguna Beach and has been critical of plans for the airport.

In the past 12 months, John Wayne Airport has received 1,605 complaint calls about jet noise, including 453 from the same household on Balboa Island, Nguyen said. Noise complaints increase in the summer months because people spend more time outdoors and leave the windows and doors of their homes open.