City denies banning jets
Santa Monica’s airport is once again at the center of a national dispute with the Federal Aviation Administration, which may have implications for airports across the country.
Airport officials are studying whether to create 300-foot “safety buffer zones” at each end of the runway, removing 600 of the nearly 1700 feet of runway asphalt planes use to take off and land at the airport.
By instituting the restricted runway spaces, larger business jets — which studies show are using the airport in increasing numbers — would be precluded from taking off or landing at the airport.
However, federal officials say Santa Monica is wrongly interpreting the FAA’s own rules. The safety zones are only required for new airports under construction, and they argue there are no FAA rules that allow an airport to restrict itself to a certain aircraft size.
The FAA has launched a formal investigation into Santa Monica’s proposal, dubbed the Airport Conformance Plan. Federal investigators want to know if what’s being proposed violates federal law, FAA grant requirements or an agreement the city made with the FAA in 1984 to continue operating the airport uninterrupted until 2015.
“We’ll have an inquiry into the events and practices surrounding the issue of the safety buffer,” said Jerry Snyder, a regional FAA spokesman. “But certainly if we didn’t have concerns over the issue, we would not be investigating at this point.”
It’s no secret Santa Monica remains a recurring thorn in the FAA’s side. For more than 20 years, the FAA has fought the city on many things, from when Santa Monica unsuccessfully tried to ban jet aircraft and then attempted to close the airport entirely to changing flight patterns and enacting some of the stringiest noise ordinances in the country.
“Santa Monica is a very unique situation,” said Marcia Adams, a Washington, D.C.-based spokeswoman for the FAA. “This is the first time an airport has attempted something like this.”
Some FAA officials and business jet supporters now accuse Santa Monica of loosely interpreting FAA rules as another way of instituting another jet ban. They back up their claims with a study that they believe shows if Santa Monica’s Airport Conformance Plan is enacted, 50 percent of the jets currently using the airport would be displaced.
“Although the staff memorandum dances around the subject, it is clear that the operation of larger aircraft at the airport does not raise a safety issue — and has not raised a safety issue for more than a decade — that such aircraft have been operated to and from the airport,” wrote Jack Olcott, president of the National Business Aviation Association, in a July 22 letter to the city’s Airport Commission. “The proposed action is no more than an attempt to ban larger aircraft, and probably all jets, from the airport, more on the grounds of perception than reality,” he wrote.
City officials dismiss claims that they are attempting anything other than safety-related measure. But they agree the FAA watches Santa Monica fairly closely because of its past dealings.
“I think they are taking a fairly aggressive stance towards us,” said Deputy City Attorney Martin Tachiki. “I think they believe this is about restricting access, and it’s really not. This about making sure the right size aircraft are flying into the airport.”
In 2000, of the 172,274 flights in and out of Santa Monica Airport, about 13,000 were jet operations, according to city officials. In 2001, there were 147,869 flights, with about 15,000 of those being jet operations.
While jet activity at the airport has been growing, it still remains about 10 percent of the total traffic at the airport. Of that 10 percent, about half are nonconforming aircraft, city officials said.
That means on average, less than 5 percent of the airport’s total traffic is nonconforming.
“We’re not saying ban jets, we want aircraft to fly into here that conforms to the airports layout and conforms to the FAA’s own guideline for conformance,” said Santa Monica Airport Manager Bob Trimborn. “It’s reacting to a gradual fleet-mix change of aircraft using the airport.”
While city officials acknowledge they cannot ban jet aircraft from using the airport, they say Santa Monica has every right to protect its residents and make the facility as safe as possible.
A study conducted by the Airport Commission found that some business jets, which are technically too large to use Santa Monica Airport, are increasingly flying into the airfield. Last year, the study found there were over 6,000 take-offs and landings by the larger business aircraft, violating an FAA threshold for airport’s the size.
To cope with the increased presence of larger jets, the Airport Commission was given two options.
One was to extend the airport’s runway by 300 feet in either direction — which would cross Bundy Drive at one end, and eat up approximately 50 residential homes at the other.
Or create 300-foot “safety buffer” zones at either end of the runway and prohibit planes from flying through the airport that couldn’t land on the remaining 1,200 feet of runway. Since the first option is prohibitive both politically and monetarily — it’s estimated extending the runway could cost millions of dollars — last May the Airport Commission voted unanimously to create the safety buffers.
“If you can’t make the facility fit the aircraft, then the next turn is making the aircraft fit the airport,” said Trimborn.
The City Council unanimously agreed, and two weeks ago gave the conformance plan conceptual approval. By its vote, the council sent a strong message to Washington that it intends to back up its Airport Commission and pursue the buffer zones, Trimborn said.
“To me, safety trumps everything,” said Trimborn. “This has nothing to do with banning jets. This isn’t a noise issue.”
If the FAA investigation finds Santa Monica in violation of federal laws of the 1984 agreement, then it can file a complaint in federal court, seeking an injunction.
That could be a tough argument to sell to a judge, Trimborn said.
“But it will be hard for them to argue that these aircraft can magically operate here when the airport doesn’t conform to their own standards,” he said. “It’ll be a tough sell, I think.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 27, 2002. Read the original PDF.