Our Health and Safety Are At Risk Thanks to Jet Blue; Write To The FAA And RPV City Officials ASAP

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Jet Blue's latest lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. could have a major impact on our health and safety in Portuguese Bend. 

It's all like a bad game of dominos. If we don't act quickly, the residents of Portuguese Bend lose, bigtime.

Jet Blue has lobbied successfully to change the Long Beach Airport airspace from Class Delta to Class Charlie. One of the results of this change is that general aviation planes (read: private aircraft), will not be able to enter this airspace. 

The first problem that this creates for our area is safety. Here's why: According to RPV resident and private pilot Don Stewart, for the past 30 years, "the main designated student pilot practice area has been over the Los Angeles and Long Beach outer harbor area. The boundaries of this flight training and practice area are Point Fermin to the west, Terminal Island and Long Beach coastlines to the north, Huntington Beach to the east and about mile or so south of the Long Beach breakwater ."

Flight schools based at the Hawthorne, Torrance, Compton, Long Beach, Fullerton and John Wayne airports all use this flight training area on a daily basis, according to Stewart. He says that because this area is situated mainly over industrial facilities and the outer Long Beach and L.A. harbors, there have been very few complaints from the general public. 

However, the new FAA airspace proposal will reduce most of this flight training area, forcing  "flight instructors and student pilots to relocate to the lightly used flight training airspace over the Rancho Palos Verdes coastline," said Stewart. The approximate boundaries of the Palos Verdes practice area are Point Vicente to the west, Palos Verdes Drive South to the north, Point Fermin to the east, and two to three miles off the coast for the Eastern boundary. Stewart notes that this area is approximately half the size of Long Beach- L.A. Harbor training area.  (The map above shows the old training area and the proposed new area.)

"This will cause heavy aircraft congestion in a very small area, or what aviators and air traffic controllers call airspace compression and will raise the possibility of mid air collisions over the RPV coastline," said Stewart.  

To put it into words of one syllable: the same number of student pilots as always will be practicing turns, descents, ascents, stalls and other beginning pilot skills, in a much smaller area, right off our coast. Because these pilots will be shoved into a much smaller area than they are used to, the risk of problems is greatly increased. 

The old training area provided many possible locations for emergency landings, according to Stewart, while the only place for emergency landings in the new area is Trump National Golf Course and "that's not particularly good."

In addition to issues of safety, the second problem for RPV residents is air pollution from the high amount of lead particles that will foul the air in RPV as a result of the increased number of aircraft flying overhead. "Unlike modern automobile engines, piston powered aircraft engines are required to use 100 high octane fuel with lead additives," Stewart explained.  

"A single gallon of aviation fuel contains two cubic centimeters of lead. A typical training aircraft engine burns 10 gallons of fuel per hour. This equates to approximately 20 cubic centimeters of lead particles falling from the sky for every flight hour flown. Every week, many hundreds of flight hours are currently flown by the dozens of flight schools over the existing Long Beach-LA Harbor practice area. A high percentage of these flights will now be forced to operate over the Rancho Palos Verdes coastline," he said, adding that the normal prevailing wind flow between Point Fermin and Point Vicente will blow the lead onshore and on to RPV neighborhoods. 

Finally, all this additional air traffic will dramatically increase noise in our area. 

This change was proposed at a public FAA hearing in Long Beach on June 21 and 22. It appears that the city of RPV was not notified about the meeting, even though the change would have a major impact on this area. Note also that the FAA is exempt from CEQA (California Evironmental Quality Act) review and other governmental review.

Stewart has written to the RPV Mayor, City Council and City Manager about his concerns. The city has referred the matter to Dennis McLean, who was out of town this week but will be back Monday. McLean is the RPV Director of Finance and Information Technology and serves as staff liaison to the LAX Roundtable. E-mail addresses and telephone numbers for city council members and McLean are here.

A copy of Stewart's letter has been forwarded to Tim Kelly, to alert the PBCA Board, which, unfortunately, does not meet again until August 2.

Here's the big problem: Anyone who wants to have any input on this matter needs to contact the FAA on or BEFORE July 31, 2010.  Any comments must be submitted in TRIPLICATE to:

Reference FR Doc. 2010-7652

Glark Desing, Operations Support Group, AJV-W2
Western Service Area, Air Traffic Organization
Federal Aviation Administration
1601 Lind Avenue, SW
Renton, WA 98057

Stewart believes that once the FAA makes the decision to change the airspace, there will be no opportunity for any changes to the ruling, but it probably will be 18 months to three years before it takes effect.


If you care about our safety and health in Portuguese Bend, let your public officials know NOW!