Nighttime Ban on Helicopter Tours Sought : Van Nuys Airport: Noise complaints by neighbors prompt Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to propose action.

Nighttime helicopter sightseeing tours out of Van Nuys Airport have become a favorite of tourists and romantics looking for a heavenly view of the City of Angels. But complaints by airport neighbors that they create a hellish din threatens to ground the flights.

Prodded by complaints from airport neighbors, Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky has asked the city Department of Airports to consider banning all nighttime helicopter flights from the airport except for emergency services.

The proposed helicopter ban, which has been requested in the past by residents of Encino and Sherman Oaks, alarmed helicopter companies that offer tourists regular nighttime sightseeing flights over Hollywood and Beverly Hills that include dinner and champagne.

“According to complaints that I have received, these flights leave Van Nuys as close as six minutes apart, and do not fly on approved flight paths over freeways and industrial areas but go sightseeing over homes in the Santa Monica Mountains at very low altitudes,” Yaroslavsky said in a Sept. 14 letter to Clifton Moore, director of the Department of Airports.

Van Nuys Airport Manager Ron Kochevar said the city attorney’s office is reviewing the proposal to determine if such a ban would be legal. He said the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits airports from banning particular types of aircraft or specific aircraft activities.

Representatives of two of the helicopter charter companies that would be most affected by a nighttime ban said they were very concerned about Yaroslavsky’s proposal, which they said would ruin their businesses.

Kathy Deetz, vice president of HeliNet, which provides helicopter training, charter flights and air transportation service for several San Fernando Valley banks, said a nighttime ban would “put us out of business.” She said her company employs 70 people and operates six helicopters.

HeliNet flies about four nighttime sightseeing tours each week, Deetz said. Most of its six or so flights each night are to transport checks from banks in the Valley to a check-processing center in downtown Los Angeles.

Deetz said representatives of all the helicopter firms that operate out of Van Nuys Airport plan to meet Thursday to discuss Yaroslavsky’s proposal and the noise complaints that prompted it.

Nigel Turner, president of Heli LA, one of the largest helicopter charter firms in Southern California, said he was “very upset and very frustrated” with Yaroslavsky’s proposal. He said he suspects that the councilman acted in response to exaggerated reports of helicopter noise by airport neighbors.

Turner said his company is based in Santa Monica but flies about eight charter flights daily from Van Nuys Airport, most of them nighttime champagne and sightseeing flights over Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

He said he had written a terse response to Yaroslavsky’s office.

Yaroslavsky could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

But homeowners who have complained to airport officials for many months about helicopter noise said they support Yaroslavsky’s proposal.

Doron Kauper, a member of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., said he has complained to Yaroslavsky’s office about the helicopter noise, which he described as a “battleground sound.”

“It got to the point where I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “I couldn’t let it go on.”

He said most residents around the airport are willing to put up with the noise of police and fire helicopters providing emergency services. But they are less tolerant of the nighttime sightseeing tours, he said.

“They are operators who are profiting at the expense of our peace of mind,” said Kauper, a television commercial producer who said he works at home and is often interrupted by helicopter noise.

Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, said the ban is “consistent with what we have been asking for.”

He agreed with Kauper that residents are not tolerant of the sightseeing flights because “they serve no practical purpose except to create noise and to joy ride.”

Silver, a longtime critic of the airport, has completed a 35-page study of helicopter operations at Van Nuys Airport that he said is based on airport records and observations over the past four months. The report concludes, among other things, that nighttime sightseeing flights are a major source of noise in adjoining neighborhoods.

But Deetz and Turner dispute Silver’s report, saying his figures are flawed and exaggerate the number of charter and sightseeing flights taken daily out of the airport.