City Won’t Challenge 55 Flights : Future Growth Is Real Issue, Lawyers for Newport Say

Attorneys representing Newport Beach told a Superior Court judge Friday that they do not plan to challenge the recent increase in the number of flights allowed at John Wayne Airport in their attempt to have the county held in contempt of court for its airport expansion plans.

It was the first time Newport Beach had agreed not to challenge the 14 additional flights, which began April 1, without receiving some concessions. However, the city’s attorneys said they could still go to federal court to challenge the increase, which raised the limit to 55 flights daily.

Friday’s announcement took most of the bite out of the city’s bid to force county officials to comply with a 1982 court order that jet flights at John Wayne be limited to 41 a day.

“I don’t want to give the impression that we don’t care about 55 flights,” Steven Pflaum, the city’s special airport counsel, said in an interview. “But we care even more about 73 (flights), and even more about the possibility of flights above that.”

No Rollback Sought

Accordingly, Pflaum said he is not asking the court to roll back jet flights at John Wayne to the 41-a-day level of before April 1. Such a reversal, in effect, would evict from the airport three new airlines and jeopardize tickets already sold to the 2,000 new passengers a day served by the additional flights.

Instead, the city is asking the court to hold the county in contempt for adopting a master plan and environmental impact report that will allow up to 73 flights daily after 1990. City officials say a new terminal could be built to accommodate even more flights.

Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab is expected to rule on the case sometime next week.

At issue is former Superior Court Judge Bruce Sumner’s 1982 ruling, rejecting the environmental reports on a previous master plan and imposing the 41-flights-a-day limit.

Two Readings of Ruling

Newport Beach interpreted Sumner’s ruling as requiring the county to return to the court with its new expansion plan, but the county’s attorneys argued that there was no such requirement, particularly since it was a new master plan that was adopted by the Board of Supervisors early this year.

Moreover, Michael Gatzke, county counsel on airport matters, said Friday that he might ask the federal court to hold Newport Beach in contempt of an order issued last month barring the city from filing new suits over the airport in state court.

The county is trying to consolidate the airport litigation into a single case to be heard in federal court, though city officials say they believe they would get a better hearing on state environmental laws in state court. The current contempt motion, the city says, was brought not as a new lawsuit, but as an extension of its earlier one against airport expansion.

Fearing that a contempt finding could jeopardize the expanded flight schedule, AirCal and Continental Airlines have filed briefs in support of the county, arguing that the federal courts should have jurisdiction.

Despite Newport Beach’s assertion that it will not challenge the 55 flights, Continental’s attorney, Tom Malcolm, said he is concerned that Stop Polluting Our Newport, an environmental group also challenging airport expansion, has not made a similar declaration.

The attorney for the environmental group made no statement on the issue in Friday’s court hearing, and no representative could be reached for comment after the hearing.

The Airport Working Group, an umbrella organization to which Stop Polluting Our Newport belongs and a party in the federal court case, has agreed in the past to the 55 flights, in exchange for concessions from the county, such as a promise to develop a new airport somewhere else.

Court Hearing Is Goal

Pierce O’Donnell, also representing Newport Beach, said Friday that although the contempt motion is a quasi-criminal proceeding, the city is seeking only to have the expansion plan reviewed in state courts.

“We don’t seek to punish, imprison or fine the county or anyone else. That is not our purpose,” he said.

In fact, city officials have asked Judge Schwab, should he decide against holding the county in contempt, to revise Sumner’s 1982 ruling to make it more clear that the new expansion plan must be re-submitted to the court.

Gatzke argued Friday, however, that it clearly never was Sumner’s intent to have a new master plan returned to the court. Sumner expressly struck out such provisions when he wrote his order, and deliberately restricted the ruling to the earlier expansion plan under his review, Gatzke argued.