Burbank Airport Part 161 Study

Re “Abide by Study Findings,” Oct. 25.

The Times needs to carefully consider why Burbank (and the other communities surrounding the airport) have great cause to be concerned with the results of the Part 161 study:

* Despite the fact that we have a new Federal Aviation Administration director, many of the same FAA bureaucrats remain in place. Those FAA bureaucrats approved an airport authority sponsored environmental impact report that said adding dozens of new flights at the airport would have no effect on the surrounding environment.

* The FAA clings to CNEL [Community Noise Equivalency Level] calculations as the sole factor in determining whether residents deserve additional protections from airport noise. According to the procedure for determining CNEL, one could add hundreds of flights per day at the airport and the CNEL “number” would never change, which means residents would never need additional protection from noise.

* With the authority showing no willingness to compromise and instead continuously casting Burbank as hopelessly unreasonable, it is difficult to imagine a reasonable examination of noise mitigation measures in a study that will essentially be sponsored by the authority.

It is not surprising that Burbank believes it is hardly likely to get a fair hearing in a Part 161 study. The truth is that the authority, and recently the airlines, had numerous opportunities to resolve this dispute without further legal wrangling. All the authority is doing is forcing the fight into a different forum where the authority probably thinks it has a better chance of winning.

CHRISTOPHER BARNES, Studio City