Flight Path

Last week I was listening to the Dodgers' game in New York. As a plane roared overhead and drowned out Ross Porter's voice on the radio, I thought: "What a shame! Thirty years of sports events constantly compromised by that nuisance. What fools would build a ballpark right under a flight path?" Then the next day's news item: LAX Runway 24 Stadium approved. On second thought, maybe it isn't so bad. When the ground game gets bogged down, fans can turn their attention to the air game.

NASA space shuttle Endeavour's departure for Los Angeles has been delayed another day, officials at Kennedy Space Center said Monday. A low-pressure front in the northern Gulf of Mexico is generating stormy weather along Endeavour's flight path, grounding the orbiter until Wednesday. Endeavour, mounted onto a specially modified 747 carrier aircraft, was originally set to be ferried to its final hom e in the California Science Center at sunrise Monday. Managers are considering their options, NASA spokesman Mike Curie said.

Citing a concern for the quality of life in Brea, City Council members unanimously rejected a controversial proposal to use a helipad atop the Security Pacific National Bank Operations Center. After more than three hours of testimony, mostly from residents who opposed the proposal, council members Tuesday night denied Security Pacific's request for up to five helicopter flights a day.

WASHINGTON - After quietly testing Predator drones over the Bahamas for more than 18 months, the Department of Homeland Security plans to expand the unmanned surveillance flights into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to fight drug smuggling, according to U.S. officials. The move would dramatically increase U.S. drone flights in the Western Hemisphere, more than doubling the number of square miles now covered by the department's fleet of nine surveillance drones, which are used primarily on the northern and southwestern U.S. borders.

I can't help but wonder if the citizens of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa have noticed that there is an element of insanity taking over Orange County. Where has our common sense gone? Right in front of our eyes, our infrastructure is being destroyed. Our streets and freeways are impassable, our parks are now for the exclusive use of illegal immigrants, El Toro is being converted to more homes, our hospitals are overwhelmed and our only airport is becoming too dangerous to use (let alone live under the flight path)

I refer to a June 21 letter by Leonard Hall about El Toro options and alternatives. Shortly after John Wayne Airport went into operation, I lived in Newport Beach near the Back Bay--where there were large, beautiful and very expensive homes, including one which, by a strange twist of events, was owned by Pilar Wayne, the late John Wayne's widow. I clearly remember then the complaints of Back Bay area homeowners who were in the flight path of planes using John Wayne Airport. The complaints were not only about noise but also about values of homes dropping.

Why would anyone even consider building a museum-theater complex under the flight path of the second-busiest airport in the United States? Why would anyone even consider destroying the last remaining major greenbelt in the entire San Fernando Valley? Finally, who gives businessman Louis Foster, who made the donation, and Dodo Meyer, who chairs the Cultural Foundation, the right to defy the will of the people? Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen have stated in no uncertain terms in every survey ever conducted that they want the basin undeveloped.

As a concerned parent of two students attending Oxnard High School, I feel it is imperative that I write you to let you know that I am in favor of relocating the high school and doing it now. The school was condemned by the state in 1988 as unsafe due to its location 1,700 feet from the Oxnard Airport's runway and directly under the flight path. That fact should be enough to scare any parent into supporting a new site. But further statistics from the National Air Transportation Safety Board state that 66% of all aircraft accidents occur within 2,500 feet of airports and 73% of these occur during take-offs and landings.

Officials at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station are looking for an explosive cartridge that fell from an aircraft Friday during a routine training flight. The cartridge, described as a silver cylinder about 1 inch long and 1 inch wide, has an explosive power similar to that of a blasting cap, according to a statement from the Marines. The cartridge is related to fireworks and other pyrotechnic devices, the statement said. Unlike a blasting cap, however, this cartridge would require a special electric charge to be detonated.

Your recent article, "Van Nuys Airport Business Sector Flying High," Sept. 18, offends many readers by simply summarizing a possibly correct but very biased report. This report, claiming to be an "economic impact study," documents a modest increase in jobs and revenue (1.8% average per year over eight years for jobs, and 3.4% average per year over eight years for gross income, both including the effect of inflation), and claims to document "a huge economic impact." The size of the impact does not appear to be huge, and the report totally ignores at least one critically important economic factor: flight path property values.