Neighbors to Council -- Don't Approve FAA Plan

March 24, 2008

To: Santa Monica City Council
From: Board of Directors, Friends of Sunset Park
Re: 3/25/08 agenda items 3-A (FAA proposal) and 7-A (Ordinance banning Class C and D aircraft)

1. The FAA's March 7th proposal offers no safety options for the east end of the runway at Santa Monica Airport (SMO).

The FOSP Board rejects any "safety" proposal for SMO that does not protect residents living near the east of the runway. These are people’s lives we’re dealing with. It’s not just a matter of percentages. Everyone has been living under a cloud of imminent disaster while the FAA has dawdled, delayed, decided what’s “practicable,” and seeemingly done its darnedest to protect aviation interests and increase airport capacity at the expense of residents’ safety.

2. The FAA proposal for the west end of the runway will not protect neighbors to the west because
it doesn't meet the FAA's own safety standard. Standard options would include either:

a) a 400 foot EMAS bed with a 35 foot lead-in, or
b) a 250 foot EMAS bed with a 350 foot lead-in.

Instead, on 3/7/08, the FAA proposed:

c) a 250 foot EMAS bed with a 25 foot lead-in.

According to the EMAS manufacturer, this latest FAA plan would provide 70-knot stopping capability for only 2 of the 7 SMO fleet mix aircraft that they analyzed. Two out of seven!

The FOSP Board rejects this sub-standard EMAS proposal as offering little protection to nearby residents.

3) EMAS is not effective for "veeroffs," which are involved in over 50% of runway excursions in the landing phase, according to the Flight Safety Foundation and the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations. Neither is it effective for undershoots and overshoots. Nor is it effective for landings beyond the threshold with landing gear off the paved runway.

The FOSP Board feels that installing a non-standard EMAS bed, or even a standard one, will do nothing to protect the kids playing on the "Tot Lot," the baseball fields, or the soccer fields in Clover Park, the toddlers at Hill 'n' Dale Pre-School at 25th and Ashland, or the children and adults at other SMO-adjacent facilities and homes from large, fast Class C and D aircraft that might veer off the runway. And it will do nothing to protect residents from a large, heavy plane that manages to take off but then develops mechanical problems, loses speed and altitude, and then crashes into homes while trying to return to SMO for an emergency landing.

4) The FAA's March 7th proposal is not much better than what they have proposed in the past -- partial protection at 70 knots, as opposed to partial protection at 40 knots, when Class D aircraft can land at speeds up to 165 knots.

• Phoenix, AZ (overrun in 2001)
• Bangladesh (overrun in 2004 – 80 people injured and a Fokker 28 destroyed)
• Indonesia (overrun in 2004 – 26 killed and a MD-82 destroyed)
• Germany (overrun in 2005 – a Boeing 747 destroyed)
• Teterboro, NJ (2 overruns in 2005, one causing 20 injuries)
• Toronto, CANADA (in 2005, an Air France Airbus with 297 passengers and 12 crew slid off the
  runway, burst into flames and was destroyed)
• Chicago, IL (in 2005 a Southwest Boeing ran off the end of the runway, rolled through a blast fence, an airport perimeter fence, and onto an adjacent roadway, where it struck an automobile, killing a 6-year-old passenger)
• Sault Ste. Marie, MI (veer-off in 2007)
• Traverse City MI (overrun in 2007)
• Sao Paulo, BRAZIL (a TAM Airlines Airbus overran and exploded, killing 199, including 13 on the
  Ground
• Des Moines, IA (overrun in 2007)
• Jackson Hole, WY (veer-off in 2008)
• Indonesia (overrun in March 2008)

“The National Transportation Safety Board has investigated 12 runway overruns since 2001….Most involved smaller private planes, not airliners. Pilot error, including misjudging needed stopping distance and aircraft speed, was responsible for most of the runway overruns, the safety board said.” – Chicago Tribune

“Since 1990, there have been no less than 807 overruns resulting in significant airframe damage.” – IFALPA News (International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations)

“In the first seven months of 2006, the cumulative death toll resulting from runway overruns was over 200….According to incident and accident statistics, these events [runway excursions/overruns] occur on average, at a rate of around one a week.” – IFALPA Position Statement

In 2007, a Falcon 900 experienced a malfunction that caused the pilot to abort taking off. After he applied the brakes, it took 2,000 feet before the plane stopped, ending up 400 feet off the runway at the airport in Santa Barbara, CA.

Also in 2007, the pilot of a Citation jet evidently tried to abort a landing at the airport in Conway, Arkansas and skidded into a home near the west end of the runway. The pilot and a 71-year-old woman who lived in the house were both killed. A similar accident had occurred at Conway in 1990.

On December 7, 2007, the GAO reported that the FAA had not prepared a national runway safety plan since 2002, despite agency policy that it be updated every 2 or 3 years. “FAA also lacks data on runway overruns that could be used to analyze the causes and circumstances of such incidents.” (reported on the web site of the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association)

“The International Federation of Air Line Pilots Association (IFALPA) has been warning of the dangers of insufficient runway overrun areas for more than 20 years.” (Runway Overrun Report)

5) For the current SMO fleet mix, according to FAA safety guidelines, there should be 1,000-foot runway safety areas at both ends of the runway. However, SMO has NO runway safety areas. Furthermore, homes on the west side of the airport are located only about 300 feet from the end of the runway. The FAA seems reluctant to propose any runway safety options that might shorten the usable runway and limit the fleet mix at SMO. With the March 7th proposal, the EMAS bed would seemingly extend the west end of the runway to less than 200 feet from homes. (The last time the SMO runway was extended was during World War II.) Homes and the gas station on the east side of the airport, which would receive no such protection under the latest FAA proposal, are already less than 200 feet from that end of runway.

The FOSP Board feels that the convenience of a small number of people who like to travel by private jet should not outweigh the safety of thousands of residents who live near SMO. Santa Monica residents were willing to make sacrifices during World War II, when 13,000 war planes were manufactured over a period of four years at the McDonnell Douglas plant at SMO. But the war in the Pacific ended in 1945. There is no good reason to extend the SMO runway closer to homes in 2008.

6) The fleet mix at Santa Monica Airport has gone from 1,176 jet operations (landings and takeoffs) in 1983 to 18,575 jet operations in 2007. That translates to a current average of 50 jet flights per day passing only a few hundred feet over people's homes.

The residential neighborhoods, which were developed in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, have remained the same. It's neither the residents nor their homes which are causing a safety problem at SMO, it's the steadily rising number of larger, faster jets (for which the airport was never designed) flying into our neighborhood which is causing the problem. The FAA should not be asking residents to risk their families' safety because a few business executives and other individuals who can afford fractional ownership don't want to be bothered going through security at LAX.

7) Airplane crashes connected with SMO are not uncommon. Here is a partial list:

• 1978-1987 - Eleven "landing off the runway" incidents involving airplanes that used SMO occurred
  from 1978 to 1987.
• 1987 (Cessna 182 crashed on Rose Ave. in Mar Vista),
• 1989 (Cessna 150 crashed on Rose Ave. in Venice; Cessna 210 crashed at Hillcrest Country Club in Rancho Park; P-51 Mustang crashed into a home on Wade St. in Mar Vista; and a Wheeler Express crashed into 3 homes on Greenfield Ave. in West Los Angeles),
• 1990 (home-built Long Eze crashed into the ocean near Santa Monica Pier; the pilot died),
• 1991 (Piper Malibu crashed into a home in West Los Angeles),
• 1992 (Mooney Ranger M-20 clipped a utility pole, burst into flames, and crashed in the front yard of a home at Dewey and Walgrove; the pilot and passenger died),
• 1993 (Piper Comanche crashed into the ocean off Malibu; Marchetti crashed into an apartment building on 4th St. near Bay; the pilot and 2 passengers died ),
• 1994 (Piper Cherokee crashed into a home on Barrington; the pilot was injured and the passenger died; another plane crashed in the backyard of one of our FOSP members who lived on Ashland Ave.; the pilot died),
• 1995 (a homemade experimental aircraft crashed into a home in Mar Vista),
• 2001 (Cessna overran the end of runway and burned on the west embankment next to 23rd St.; the pilot and passenger died),
• 2002 (Beechcraft took off from SMO and crashed near the High Desert Airport in Joshua Tree),
• 2003 (Beechcraft took off from SMO and crashed into an apartment building near Fairfax High School; there were 5 fatalities (pilot, passenger, 3 residents) and 10 people injured (5 of them critically),
• 2004 (Mooney M20 crashed into a Mar Vista home; the pilot and his wife died).

Another plane on approach to SMO crashed onto the play field at Webster Middle School on Sawtelle Blvd. in West Los Angeles.

On January 13, 2008, a small single-engine plane overran the west end of the SMO runway. Luckily, no one was hurt.

On March 11, 2008, a single-engine Cessna experienced a malfunction with the landing gear mechanism which prevented the left main landing gear from extending to the full down and locked position. It was almost forced to "crash land" at SMO. Luckily, the pilot was able to maneuver the aircraft to correct the situation.

Luckily, none of these crashes involved jets. But equipment sometimes fails, and pilots sometimes make errors in judgement. We cannot count on "luck" to always keep us safe. Therefore, with houses just across the street from the runway ends, residents need more protection than what the FAA is offering.

8) The FAA has a statutory mandate to promote safety.

Residents expect that the City will keep them safe. Whatever the FAA's missions and goals may be, and no matter how it goes about implementing them, the City must protect its residents.

The Board of Directors of Friends of Sunset Park strongly supports immediate implementation of the city's proposed ordinance to ban Class C and D aircraft from using Santa Monica Airport.

Furthermore, we urge our Congressional representatives to pass legislation to protect us from a federal agency which seems to have lost sight of its safety mandate.

*************************************************************

FOSP Board of Directors: Brian Bland, Phyllis Chavez, Tom Cleys, Charles R. Donaldson,
Susan J. Hartley, Emmalie Hodgin, Zina Josephs, Gail Myers, John Reynolds, Lorraine Sanchez

FOSP Airport Steering Committee: Cathy Larson, Ping Ho, Stephen Mark, Diane Moss

Friends of Sunset Park (FOSP) is a city-recognized neighborhood organization in Santa Monica representing approximately 7,000 households near Santa Monica Airport.

This position statement is also supported by: