By Jorge Casuso
May 19, 2009 – It didn’t take a legal battle between the City and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to curb jet traffic at Santa Monica Airport. It took an economic nose dive.
While the two sides continue wrangling over a year-old Santa Monica ordinance that restricts larger, faster jets at the airport, the number of jet operations has dropped dramatically from 18,575 in 2007 to 15,710 last year, a 15 percent decrease, according to the airport's annual noise report issued last month.
Propeller aircraft operations also dropped, from 105,331 in 2007 to 104,124, or 1.1 percent, according to the report. Helicopter operations, however, rose from 3,130 in 2007 to 3,204, an increase of 2.3 percent.
“It was stunning to see it drop so much,” Santa Monica Airport Manager Bob Trimborn said of the dramatic drop in jet operations.
The decrease is in large part due a tanking economy across the nation, as well as in the affluent Westside, Trimborn said.
Jet operations had been steadily increasing at Santa Monica’s 63-year-old municipal, from 17,736 in 2005, to 18,101 in 2006, to a high of 18,575 in 2007.
The upward trend -- fueled by the Westside’s rise as a booming entertainment and high-tech mecca – skyrocketed after 9/11, as the very rich and top corporate executives sought a way around long security checks at LAX, airport officials said.
The jets also became larger after companies like NetJets began offering “fractional ownership” as well as leases of large, luxurious jets, according to aviation experts.
Not only did jet operations decrease, but there were far fewer noise violations – from 214 in 2007 to 166 last year, or a 22 percent drop, according to the report.
Of the 123,038 aircraft operations recorded last year, 99.9 percent were in compliance with Santa Monica Airport’s noise ordinance, which allows for a maximum noise level of 95 decibels measured by noise monitors located 1,500 feet from each end of the runway.
“It’s a pretty big success story,” Trimborn said. “My staff is doing a bang-up job.
“It has to do with relations we’ve built up” with the pilots and flight operators and “a full court press,” Trimborn added.
The significant drop in jet traffic comes as the City and FAA are waging a heated battle over an April 2008 ordinance that bans C and D aircraft with approach speeds of between 139 and 191 mph.
Last Thursday, the FAA released a decision that found the ban "unjustly and unreasonably" discriminates against specific aircraft.
City officials, who anticipated the decision, will likely file an appeal with the FAA’s associate administrator for policy, who must make a final ruling by July 8.
If the City loses, as is widely expected, it can then file an appeal in federal court., which earlier this month upheld a legal order obtained by the FAA blocking the City from enacting the ordinance.
FAA officials have said the law, which the City Council adopted a year ago, is unnecessary, illegally discriminates against aircraft types and harms jet operators.
City officials counter that it only imposes the federal agency’s own runway standards and is necessary to safeguard neighboring residents who live near the runway.
The City has called the FAA’s challenge a “legal assault” on an ordinance responding to increasing concerns that soaring jet traffic -- from 4,829 jet operations in 1994 to 15,710 last year – is endangering houses that sit less than 300 feet from the airport’s only runway.
