Santa Monica Airport

The Santa Monica Airport Commission has approved a $200,000 computerized noise-monitoring system that officials say will help them identify noisy aircraft by using microphones and a video camera. Airport administrator Henry Dittmar said the system will help the airport reduce noise in southeastern Santa Monica. He said airport officials will measure noise produced by takeoffs and landings and either ban violators from the airport or fine them up to $500.

Opposition to plans for a huge commercial development at the Santa Monica Airport mounted Tuesday as a citizens group filed a lawsuit to block it and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley asked the city attorney's office to challenge it on environmental grounds.

Many of the people who live in the Westside neighborhoods that surround Santa Monica Airport are resigned to their fate. They may not like living with the airport, but they know it's not going away any time soon. Crashes such as two that occurred earlier this month--one single-engine Cessna fell into a busy Venice street, another into a country club golf course--serve as dramatic reminders of the hazards of life under the air lanes and renew cries among homeowners for better safety measures.

A day after the fiery crash of an experimental airplane in Santa Monica, the director of the Santa Monica Airport on Friday asked the Federal Aviation Administration to determine whether the airport could ban experimental aircraft from its runways.

Los Angeles County coroner's officials worked Thursday to confirm the identities of two men killed in a plane crash at Santa Monica Airport, but friends of the two men identified them as the general manager of an aviation website and a world-traveling Internet business development consultant. Paulo Emanuele, believed to be 46, was the general manager of the airliners.net website. Martin Schaedel, believed to be about 23, was a consultant to FareCompare, an airline fare comparison website.

The view is terrific. The jazz group jams. The ambient lighting makes everyone look good. The collection of contemporary art is well-chosen and inspired, occupying a cavernous postmodern space that is a cross between a tasteful living room and a museum. The salmon in Dijon cream sauce is divine, and the kids, if you've got 'em, are somewhere else out of earshot, being entertained and fed on the house. Not bad, one might say, for an airport restaurant.

A single-engine plane crashed near the Santa Monica Airport on Wednesday, killing the pilot and barely avoiding a home occupied by four people. The crash was the third fatal accident involving a plane from that airport in five months. It occurred just west of the airfield at 11:23 a.m., shortly after the plane had taken off. The pilot, Patrick Dean Brinnon, 36, of Northridge, was the lone occupant of the plane, which was headed for Van Nuys Airport. No one on the ground was injured.

A home-built, single-engine plane apparently lost power as it approached Santa Monica Municipal Airport on Sunday, smashing into a family garage and critically injuring the 62-year-old pilot. The aircraft, called a "pusher plane" because of its rear propeller, barely missed a house when it crashed in the 13000 block of Warren Avenue in Mar Vista.

A single-engine plane crashed into an unoccupied house in West Los Angeles on Friday night, killing the passenger and setting the house on fire. The student pilot, 22, survived the crash with a broken arm and second-degree burns on his arms and hands. He was in critical condition at ULCA Medical Center, authorities said.

Educations in design don't come cheap. Basic tuition for a year at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena is $15,000. At Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, it's $9,800. This fall, a new design school at Santa Monica College will buck the high price norm, but its creators say it certainly will not be a discount knockoff.