Marine Exercise to Raise a Ruckus Around El Toro

Residents around El Toro Marine Corps Air Station might be in for a few rude awakenings over the next week when jets as loud as Boeing 747s fly in and out 24 hours a day as part of a Marine exercise.

The exercise is designed to test how fast a Marine battalion of about 850 men can be moved from Camp Pendleton to El Toro and then flown to Fort Kelly Air Force Base in Texas in C-141 and C-5 transport planes.

The empty planes will fly in beginning about 3 p.m. today and will continue to land through “the wee hours of the morning,” according to Maj. Bob McLean, a spokesman for the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Air Base.

“The (exercise) can’t realistically occur just during the daytime, so we’re doing it around the clock,” Capt. Vicki Conkel, a Marine spokeswoman said.

The planes will be loaded with troops and equipment, including tanks, and the first will leave at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, she said.

The departures will continue through Tuesday.

The planes will begin to return next Friday afternoon and continue through 8:30 a.m. Jan. 13, she said.

The flights are scheduled about every hour and are expected to make as much noise as a 727 or 747, McLean said, adding, “Not much noisier than just the normal aircraft that might be going into LAX.”

No commercial flights are allowed in or out of John Wayne Airport between 2 and 6 a.m., an airport spokeswoman said.

John Escobedo, noise specialist with the Noise Abatement Office at John Wayne Airport, said that “727s are one of the loudest aircraft we’ve had out here.”

He said he expects to receive a lot of complaints when the exercise begins, but “complaints have to go to the military people in charge. They’re the military. They more or less do what they want to do.”

McLean said the Marines released information about the exercise Friday to try to quell complaints from residents.

“I think if they’re properly informed, they’ll recognize it’s Marines training to protect the United States,” he said.

The exercise is considered “routine field training” and is “not in response to or does it relate to any world situation,” he said.

He could not recall the last time, if ever, that this kind of exercise was conducted at the base.