Airport Noise

It's taken eight years and $6 million for Burbank airport officials to come up with a proposed solution to ease sleep-depriving aircraft noise that has frustrated nearby residents for decades: Shift some overnight operations to Van Nuys Airport. The recommendation by the Glendale-Burbank-Pasadena Airport Authority is the latest chapter in what has been among the most acrimonious homeowner battles in the San Fernando Valley.

State legislators on Monday approved an advisory resolution encouraging the Federal Aviation Administration to honor Santa Monica's ban on the fastest jets that use the city's airport. The resolution, which passed the Assembly in July and the Senate by a narrow margin Monday, also called on the FAA to review the safety of flight operations at the airport, which is within 300 feet of residential neighborhoods.

Resurrecting a years-long battle between airplane operators and other businesses that rely on the world's busiest general aviation airport and residents who live around it, Los Angeles officials moved on Monday to consider additional restrictions on noisy commercial and charter jets at Van Nuys Airport.

Federal officials on Monday dealt a serious blow to a decades-long effort to restrict nighttime flights at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, asserting that to do so would harm the national air transportation system. The Federal Aviation Administration rejected a proposed curfew that would have banned flights by airlines, cargo operators, charter services and private pilots between 10 p.m. and 6:59 a.m. with some exceptions, including emergencies. The airlines now operate under a voluntary agreement not to fly between those hours.

In a victory for Newport Beach and Orange County, the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday endorsed plans that maintain local noise limits at John Wayne Airport but raise the passenger ceiling to 10.8 million people a year by 2011. The federal agency's decision supports a landmark federal court settlement reached in 1985 that established aircraft noise restrictions, limited airport operation hours, and originally capped the passenger volume at 8.4 million people a year.

Even though the Burbank Airport authority has halted its two-decade quest to build a new terminal, and the FAA has declared that the airport can safely operate without a new one, a handful of Burbank city officials refuse to let the issue die. Later this month, Vice Mayor Stacey Murphy and City Councilman David Golonski will lead a delegation of local officials to Washington to meet with the Federal Aviation Administration, hoping to resurrect plans for a new terminal.

Airport commissioners voted Tuesday to order two studies that could eventually help reduce jet noise for communities near Los Angeles International and Van Nuys airports. The so-called Part 161 study for LAX will examine a proposal that would require planes departing at night to fly over the ocean, while the study for Van Nuys -- the busiest general-aviation airfield in the nation -- will look at a possible ban on noisy, older-generation Stage 2 business jets.

William C. Meecham, a UCLA expert on airport noise and its effects on human health and longevity, has died. He was 77. Meecham died Tuesday in Santa Monica of heart failure. After joining the UCLA faculty in 1967, Meecham became chairman of what is now the mechanical aerospace engineering department and from 1970 on concentrated his research on acoustics, particularly in relation to airport noise.

The Federal Aviation Administration has endorsed a deal between Long Beach officials and several airlines that leaves flight limits in place at the city's tiny Art Deco airport, effectively eliminating the facility's ability to relieve overcrowding at Los Angeles International. In a letter to Long Beach Airport Manager Chris Kunze, federal regulators said that a 1995 federal court settlement capping the number of commercial takeoffs there at 41 per day is legal.

Burbank Airport officials on Monday approved several new projects to improve safety and reduce noise at the airport -- moves designed, in part, to avoid having to return more than $40 million in federal money that was earmarked for a new terminal. The proposed projects include building a new "hush house" so that aircraft being repaired can rev their engines in an enclosed space rather than outdoors, as well as relocating a maintenance facility and part of a parking lot farther from the runway.