The Weight of Pushing Tin

By Mark McGuigan
Staff Writer

Oct 13 – Despite safety concerns raised by administrators at the Santa Monica Airport, federal aviation officials are opposing city efforts to bar larger aircraft from using the airport nestled in a residential community.

The dogfight to control aircraft landing rights stems from a dispute in which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) insists larger aircraft – above the current 60,000-pound weight limit -- be allowed to touch down on the historic airstrip. But local officials argue that the FAA’s request to allow more tin to cruise the azure skies to the Westside is a breach of air safety rules -- rules handed down by the FAA itself to safeguard smaller airports.

“A Gulf stream G-4 is the largest thing that comes into the airport, anything beyond that is beyond our weight capacity,” explains Airport Manager Robert Trimborn. “We have a 60,000 pound weight capacity and if you’re looking at these new variations of business jets that look like commuter airline carriers or if you bring in another alternative to the Gulf Stream product with a larger wingspan, you’re far in excess of what we allow in the airport.”

According to Trimborn, newer and larger aircraft will fall within the 75,000 - 125,000-pound range. “Our pavement just can’t withstand that. Most of them have an extremely wide wingspan that would be in the 80, 90, 100-feet width,” he said. “It’s quite idiotic to be proposing an exemption from their own (FAA) standards of weight and wingspan, dimensional limitations to an operating surface.”

A spokesman for the FAA was unavailable for comment.

To assert independence from the FAA, local airport officials in 1995 refused to accept money from FAA coffers. The move offered more autonomy over local decisions concerning air traffic and safety -- much to the FAA’s chagrin.

“If you accept FAA funds to do improvements, then you are beholden to them,” said Jeff Mathieu, director of Santa Monica Airport. “The issue the FAA has raised recently regarding a weight-based exemption is that 10 to 15 percent of the aircraft coming into the airport can be over the weight limit -- we say no to that.”

Airport officials told the FAA of their concerns and pointed to the organization’s own safety guidelines regarding larger aircraft. According to Mathieu, the FAA remained “strangely silent” on the issue.

But when local officials began crafting an Aircraft Conformance Program to ensure the continued safety of the surrounding neighborhoods by limiting the size of planes operating out of the airport, the FAA pounced on the proposal.

“They filed a federal complaint against us because what we’re doing might result in fewer aircraft being able to come to our airport and that could be discriminating in general,” said Mathieu. “Those words were actually used in their complaint against us,” he said.

The rationale for the FAA’s drive to allow bigger and faster aircraft is based purely on economics rather than avionics, according to airport officials the FAA made the request because it faces an increased demand on limited airport resources.

The commercial airline operators are clamoring for changes that would essentially free up airport space at regional hubs such as LAX for use by larger commercial jets.

“There are only so many landings and take-offs you can have at LAX,” explains Trimborn. “If you replace a 400 seat aircraft with a 20 seat aircraft, that’s inefficient. But that’s their concern, it’s not ours.”

Officials in Santa Monica contend that this desire to provide commercial airlines with more elbowroom in which to operate is putting the safety of residents and those aboard the airplane at risk. Aircraft are assigned one of four categories -- A, B, C or D -- depending on speed, wingspan and size considerations among other factors. Type A1 would be considered a small, piston-driven, single engine-plane while type D5 represents a typical commercial airliner such as a Boeing 747.

From its inception, Santa Monica airport was originally designed to accommodate type A and B aircraft. But air traffic has almost always mirrored the economy in California -- of the 160,000 airport operations last year, 10 percent of the traffic was from corporate jets.

Throughout the nineties, as the dot.com bubble burgeoned, so too did the traffic in Santa Monica airspace as more and more companies felt the need to jet executives across the country to attend customer meetings.

“Operations of the airport mirror what the economy is doing -- as the economy goes up, operations go up, as the economy goes down, airport operations go down,” explained Trimborn. “As the dot.com bubble was rising, we were seeing a corresponding increase in the activity of corporate jet activity in the airport.”

But corporate jets are not your average aircraft. Not only are they lavish, sleek and fast, their overall heft is more like a commercial airliner than a small plane. To accommodate the whims of the modern jet-setting CEO, these planes feature meeting rooms and advanced telecommunications equipment. They also pose a dramatic weight increase that can damage the underlying structure of the landing strip.

Despite the downturn in the dot.com economy, the boom in the Westside's entertainment industry has led to a sustained increase in the number of larger -- and noisier -- corporate jets landing and taking off from Santa Monica.

In fact, a study found that around 50 percent of the corporate jets screeching to a halt on Santa Monica airport’s tarmac were classified as type C or D and are punishing the surface of the airstrip. Their speed and stopping distance were also cause for concern because there would be no extra space for error on the 5,000 feet long runway.

An aerial photograph hanging on a wall in the conference room of the administration building shows the neighborhood homes in relation to the airport. The airport is surrounded on all sides by densely populated streets with some homes just yards from the end of the runway.

“We want to safeguard not only their lives (homeowners) and property but also the people that are riding on the aircraft and operating in the airport,” said Mathieu. “We want to make sure that they’re flying into and out of an airport that’s properly designed for the aircraft they’re riding on.”

Any future ordinance to limit larger jets may well start taking flak long before it reaches city hall. Officials understand that they face the very real prospect of a face-off with the FAA but are unsure just what that will involve.

"I don't know what the FAA is going to do with their own complaint," said City Attorney Marsha Moutrie. "We'll have to see what the FAA does (first)."

And to airport officials, such FAA posturing on matters of local concern is nothing short of an affront to the safety of residents in and around the airport corridor.

“It was almost like saying to the City of Santa Monica that you can’t even discuss this safety issue,” said Trimborn. “We felt like that was an affront to our sovereignty, we’re a sovereign city in a state and we can discuss issues of safety without being put upon by the federal government.”