Halt New Landing Fees for Jets, FAA tells City

By Jorge Casuso

July 14 -- In the latest struggle over control of Santa Monica Airport, federal aviation officials have stepped in to halt a fee schedule that hikes the landing rates for corporate jets, but City officials vowed to move forward with the plan that kicks in August 1.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requested that the plan be put on hold at the behest of commercial aviation groups who oppose the fee schedule, which charges a small, single-engine craft $2.90 per landing, compared to $343 for a large business jet.

But City officials argue that the FAA has failed to weigh in on the issue at the community and airport commission meetings that led to the new rates, which will pump $500,000 a year to help maintain the airport's runway and adjacent taxiways.

"We do not plan to delay the implementation," said Jeff Mathieu, who heads the City's Department of Resource Management, which oversees the airport. "Every step of the way there has been outreach. They've been aware, and at the last moment, we get a brief letter."

The letter from the FAA dated July 2-- which City officials said they received late last week -- came after the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) charged that the fee schedule was "patently discriminatory" and would force large charter and corporate jets out of the airport.

"The purported justification for this patently discriminatory fee schedule -- that this is necessary to apportion pavement maintenance costs -- simply is not credible," the NBAA wrote in its request to the FAA.

"The purpose and effect of the new fee schedule is to force larger jet aircraft to use airports other than Santa Monica, with weight as the latest proxy for unfounded noise concerns," the request said.

This is not the first time the FAA intervenes on behalf of the business group. Last year, the federal agency stepped in after City officials banned large aircraft from landing at the airport, which is one of the general aviation airports with the heaviest concentration of corporate jets. The decision is pending an investigation by the FAA.

The latest-run in with the FAA is yet another test of the City's authority to regulate use of the 5,000-foot-long-runway, which saw approximately 151,500 takeoffs and landings last year, 16,000 of them by jets.

"We're trying to maintain a working relationship," Mathieu said. "They have to identify what the problem is. Is there a constitutional conflict or problem (posed) by the action we intend to carry out? Is there a problem with the engineering study? Or is it an outright exercise in power of authority?

"I don't know what remedy they have to assist their authority because we don't know what their authority is over the local program," Mathieu said. "But we feel extremely comfortable and responsible for what we're doing."

Airport officials will begin recording landings under the new fee schedule on Augusts 1, Mathieu said. The new rates will be reflected in the bills sent out a month later, he said.

Ever since the city was ordered by the courts in 1979 not to ban jets, neighbors have complained about the deafening roar of takeoffs and landings at the airport on the city's southeast corner, which is circled by homes.

In recent years, the boom in the Westside's entertainment industry has led to a further increase in the number of larger -- and noiser -- corporate jets landing and taking off.

The increase has spurred complaints from nearby residents, who have shown the City's Airport Commission videotapes of flying lawn furniture, cracked walls and soot-covered gardens, leading to attempts by local officials to exercise more authority greater the airport.