Jet-Setters Give Santa Monica the Jitters

Residents who live near Santa Monica Airport know it's Academy Awards season by the pickup in jet traffic zooming over their houses.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger routinely jets in and out on state business.

Tom Cruise once had to outrun paparazzi who chased him down the tarmac as he tried to board his private jet.

"Everybody from the president of the United States to people who own small, single-engine planes and everybody in between flies out of here," said airport Manager Robert D. Trimborn.

Nestled amid some of the nation's priciest real estate, Santa Monica Airport offers a convenient launch pad for well-heeled Westsiders and corporate bigwigs who crave quick getaways.

Its growing clientele includes executives who favor $20-million Citation X and $35-million Gulfstream IV jets. A strong economy and post-9/11 security concerns have helped boost jet usage at the airport nearly fourfold over the last decade.

But as the single-runway facility gets busier, residents who live around it are becoming increasingly worried about noise, air pollution and safety.

They contend that it's only a matter of time before an out-of-control plane smashes past the end of the 5,000-foot runway and roars into the houses beyond, some a mere 250 feet west.

Turbulence from casino magnate Steve Wynn's jet bowled over and smashed to bits a glass-topped patio table in the backyard of Virginia Ernst, who lives just east of the airport in Los Angeles.

"We were able to identify the plane immediately," she said.

Wynn's attorney dealt with the situation, paying Ernst $3,000.

Ernst says she can look directly into the engines as jets take off. It sometimes seems, she says, that "they're going to land on the roof."

Other residents agree. Yoram Tal, a TV show editor who has lived just west of the airport for about four years, said he is "right in the line of fire" as jets take off and land.

Late one night, Tal, a small-plane pilot and Santa Monica airport commissioner, realized that he "could see not only the wing but the windows above the wing" as a jet took off. "It was no more than 200 feet from my bed," he said. "It was loud, but more than loud it was just really close."

Residents, backed by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and other politicians, say they want buffer zones at both ends of the runway that would help protect the neighborhood if a jet overshot the tarmac. Such a buffer would most likely spell the end for certain faster aircraft (including, possibly, the Gulfstream IV, Cessna Citation X and similar planes).