City officials clarify flight increase misperception

Paul Clinton

JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT -- Complaints about increased jet noise from cities

in the airport’s flight corridor may be misplaced, officials said.

The complaints, crystallized in a March letter from the city of Orange

to the Federal Aviation Administration, could be traced to a change in

perception rather than actual increases, Newport Beach Councilwoman Norma

Glover said.

The change could be due to the heating up of the debate over whether

the county can execute its plan to build an airport at the closed El Toro

Marine Corps Air Station.

“The El Toro issue has raised people’s sensitivity to noise,” Glover

said.

Glover and others were skeptical of the claims made by Orange

officials.

In a response letter, an FAA administrator said he could find no

evidence of planes operating out of the norm. FAA spokesman Jerry Snyder

reiterated that opinion.

“We can’t find anything that suggests we’re operating anywhere out of

the normal range for traffic in and out of John Wayne Airport,” Snyder

said.

Newport Beach Councilman Gary Proctor, a licensed pilot, said cloudy

weather over the past months may be causing more planes to take a

specific path arriving into John Wayne.

Under overcast conditions, all arriving planes must use the airport’s

Instrument Landing System, an invisible laser sent from the runway to the

plane’s navigational system.

“On bad weather days, the airplanes are concentrated on the same

pattern,” Proctor said. “It’s purely a function of weather.”