El Toro Safety Report to Have Broad Effect

The Federal Aviation Administration’s conclusion that commercial jets could depart and land safely out of an airport at the mothballed El Toro Marine base has sweeping implications across Southern California as government aviation experts consider redesigning the region’s airspace.

The federal agency is developing preliminary arrival and departure procedures for jets to use El Toro, Herman Bliss, manager of airports for the FAA’s western region, said in a letter this week.

However, Bliss’ message to Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson--an outspoken opponent of building an airport at the closed Marine base--didn’t address the extent to which accommodating El Toro jets could affect flights throughout much of Southern California. A final airspace review addressing safety and efficiency will be completed in March, Bliss said.

A report released nearly a year ago by county officials conceded that if 150 northbound flights were to take off from El Toro each day--as the county had proposed--the jets would run over, under or through flight paths to John Wayne, Long Beach, Los Angeles International and Ontario International airports. Air-traffic controllers said they would have to routinely untangle flights, a time-consuming chore that could trigger delays at other airports.

A preliminary airspace study of the county’s El Toro plans this summer by an FAA consultant in McLean, Va., concluded that northbound flights couldn’t be accommodated under existing conditions because of overcrowded skies.

Southern California has one of the most congested swaths of airspace in the country, second only to the New York-New Jersey area. At the same time, the region is increasingly plagued by flight delays as airports strain to keep up with demand, particularly at LAX.

Orange and Los Angeles counties both have controversial plans to expand airport service: El Toro to handle as many as 28.8 million passengers a year by 2020, with LAX adding another 14 million passengers a year through its terminals. LAX now handles 64 million passengers annually.

Local pilots and members of Congress have asked for a full overhaul of the region’s airspace. And the FAA has promised such an effort. But that redesign has been put on hold until plans are approved--or ultimately dashed--for the El Toro and LAX projects, FAA spokesman Jerry Snyder said.

“There are significant air-traffic control issues with putting in El Toro as a mainstream airport,” Snyder said Thursday. “We have to hold back until some of these local decisions are made. Whatever we do may be for naught depending on what happens.”

Locally, airport backers said the FAA’s preliminary conclusion about El Toro blows holes in arguments by South County airport foes and pilots groups that the county’s plan for the airport is unsafe.

“Their credibility is going to begin to erode more and more,” said Bruce Nestande, chairman of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, which has spent six years pushing for an airport at El Toro. “They’ve made a big deal out of the safety issue, and now the FAA has said the airport is safe.”

Airport foes, meanwhile, attacked Bliss’ conclusion as premature and political.

“We have confidence in the professional skill and training of airline professionals, but I think it’s safe to say that the flying public does not have the same confidence in obscure career bureaucrats from a regional office of the FAA,” said Paul Eckles, executive director of a nine-city anti-airport coalition.

Concerns about Southern California’s crowded airspace escalated in 1986, when 81 people were killed when a private plane and a jet bound for LAX collided over Cerritos.

FAA officials have met with a special task force of Southern California aviation interests for the last two years to consider ways to make the region’s ever-filling skies safer. Those meetings will continue later this fall and will include discussions about El Toro and the proposed LAX expansion, Snyder said.

Last month, the FAA announced it would suspend--at least temporarily--a popular coastal route near LAX for private pilots because of two midair incidents between commercial jets and smaller planes. Another popular route for private planes exists several miles north of El Toro, prompting pilots groups to worry.

Orange County officials insist flights at El Toro could be managed safely with other jets but conceded that some flights might experience “insignificant” delays. Controllers are required to keep planes separated by a minimum of three miles horizontally and 1,000 feet vertically. Departing El Toro jets would pass about 2,000 feet below flights headed toward Long Beach and about 1,000 feet below flights headed toward and leaving LAX.

Most of the anticipated “airspace interactions” between jets would take place between 2,000 and 6,500 feet above an area five to eight miles north of El Toro--just south of the intersection of the Riverside and Costa Mesa freeways.