Van Nuys Facility’s Backers Confront Critics : Hearing on Airport Spirited

More than 300 people turned out Tuesday night for a public hearing on the Van Nuys Airport held by a City Council committee, at which homeowners’ groups criticized the airport as a noisy and dangerous nuisance and airport supporters defended it as an economic asset with a glowing safety record.

Both factions, about equal in numbers, occasionally jeered, groaned or laughed at speakers from the other side.

“The San Fernando Valley is plagued by an enormous number of overflights,” complained Gerald Silver, head of Homeowners of Encino, a longtime critic of the airfield.

Petition Offered

Silver’s group, along with representatives of Ban Airport Noise, presented the committee with a petition calling for drastic controls on growth and flight operations at the airport. Silver, who said the petition had been signed by about 3,500 people, dramatically unrolled the glued-together sheets in a scroll 200 feet long.

About half of those attending the hearing wore stick-on yellow paper wings identifying them as supporters of the airport. The wings were distributed at the door by representatives of the Van Nuys Airport Assn., an organization of airport-based businesses and pilots.

Dean Cooper, air traffic manager at the airport for the Federal Aviation Administration, replied to homeowners, who said they fear air crashes, especially since a twin-engine plane crashed March 6 after having engine trouble while on a landing approach. The plane destroyed a house in a neighborhood north of the airport, killing the pilot.

Accidents Listed

Cooper said that, since the beginning of 1981, there has been one in-flight collision between planes, two serious crashes and three accidents in which disabled planes had to land on a street, a schoolyard and a cornfield. The accidents killed five people, all occupants of the planes, he said.

In the same time period, he said, the airfield, “the third-busiest airport in the whole world,” had more than 2.25 million landings and takeoffs. The accident rate, he said “is so insignificant I challenge anyone in the room” to compare the statistics with those of other forms of transportation, such as cars, trucks and buses.

The hearing into citizen complaints about the airport, held by the City Council’s Industry and Economic Development Committee, was chaired by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores. Also hearing the public testimony were mayoral candidate Councilman John Ferarro and Councilman Ernani Bernardi.

Also present were officials of the Van Nuys Airport and the City Department of Airports, which operates the airport under the direction of the Board of Airport Commissioners, appointed by the mayor.

Actress E.J. Peaker, representing Homeowners of Encino, asked the council members to ban “touch and go” and other training type flights on weekends and holidays, among other things.

She also asked the committee to replace the current limited night curfew with an absolute ban on all but emergency flights between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., to ban some aircraft altogether as too noisy and ban all helicopter and jet training flights.