Pilots suggest John Wayne expansion

Alex Coolman

An association of airline pilots has expressed serious concerns about

the feasibility of certain approach patterns at the proposed El Toro

airport and has suggested that John Wayne Airport expansion might be a

better alternative.

The Air Line Pilots Assn. International, a Virginia-based organization

that says it represents more than 56,000 American and Canadian pilots,

wrote in late July to Orange County officials to voice its worries.

“These plans are not without serious and specific limitations,” the

group wrote about certain approaches to the former El Toro Marine Corps

Air Station.

Specifically, the group said it has concerns that flights landing in a

southerly direction during bad weather would have to cope with nearby

mountains, making the approach angle excessively steep.

“The bottom line,” said Capt. Jon Russell, Western Pacific regional

safety chairman for the association, is that the proposed airport would

be “extremely limited in its ability to accommodate aircraft in poor

visibility.

“This thing has severe limitations that would force airplanes to

divert to other airports in the event that you have even marginal

weather.”

A better alternative, the group suggested, would be “an acceptable

expansion of the John Wayne-Orange County Airport.”

El Toro advocates said the pilots’ concerns, though legitimate, could

be safely addressed.

“The input from the pilots association is welcome,” said airport

proponent Tom Wall. “But what we don’t want to do, because they have made

a comment about one of a number of options, is conclude that the airport

is unworkable.”

Wall said lengthening the runway and adjusting the touchdown point for

planes could remedy the drawbacks.

He argued that it was premature in any event to criticize the proposal

when approach patterns have not yet been determined.

“For the pilots at this point to presuppose that they know the final

approach corridor and glide slope is presumptuous,” he said.

Newport Beach Mayor John Noyes said the logic linking the group’s

criticism of El Toro to its advocacy of growth at John Wayne seemed

flawed.

“The immediate answer isn’t to expand John Wayne,” said, Noyes, who

has been at the forefront of an effort to extend existing restrictions on

the flights allowed into the airport. “There may be other options in or

out of the county.”