MARCH, 1999

Captain Charles Quilter wrote the following to Coast Magazine, after the magazine published an article, favorable to El Toro Airport, by County of Orange consultant Tom Wall.

To:  Coast Orange County Magazine
3111 Second Avenue
Corona del Mar CA 92625

Dear Jim Wood;

Re Tom Wall's Comments about El Toro

Q: Who are you and why are you writing?

A: I write as a private individual who is a captain for a major airline with a particular interest in aircraft performance and who is a former Marine fighter attack squadron commander at El Toro familiar with operating jet aircraft out of El Toro.  I am also a former member of the county's Airport Land Use Commission.  I have the utmost admiration of Tom Wall who has been a distinguished Marine helicopter pilot, but so far as I know, does not have any airline experience whatever.  In his remarks he adduces positions to the FAA, airline pilots and the airlines which are incorrect, so that's why I take issue with some of his statements.

Q: What are the issues from your perspective about El Toro's future as a commercial airport?

A: First of all, the runway configuration at El Toro could hardly be worse for airliner operations: intersecting runways with criss-crossing airplanes, runways that are too close for parallel operations, no low visibility and rainy weather approaches, and worst of all, a really awful uphill slope and terrain situation.  All of the planning for a commercial airport El Toro rests on the assumption that airliners can -- and would -- operate in the same patterns as the high-performance tactical Marine Corps aircraft have used in the past.  The airlines and the military operate under completely different safety rules, and so this assumption is not valid.

Q: What do airline pilots have in mind when they say a commercial airport at El Toro is unsafe

A: Well, to begin with, you are not going to find anyone knowledgeable who will say that criss-crossing airplanes is a good idea because it is inherently hazardous.  However, intersecting runway operations are actually done at a few airports, notably San Francisco.  But there, like El Toro, even a slight decrease in visibility or a few low clouds requires that air traffic be strung out for separation safety. That's how San Francisco has earned its reputation of being the second worst airport in the country for delays.

Q: El Toro has dual parallel runways like San Francisco, and the County says that air traffic could match San Francisco's volume.  Aren't parallel runways a big help in expediting traffic flows?

A: At El Toro the runways are too close together, so wingtips are in danger of colliding.  Even if they build new runways farther apart, airplanes using them for departures would be forced by the terrain to fly the same flight paths so that this advantage gets negated.  At San Francisco, airplanes fly diverging paths which allows more traffic.

Q: Are there any problems with landing to the north like the Marines did?

A: It's the only practical way to approach El Toro.  Landings from any other direction are almost impossible in airliners.  Most of the time, north landings are satisfactory with two exceptions: during rain and fog. Rain at El Toro comes on a south to southeast wind accompanied by winds that exceed allowable tailwind limits for airliners.  Studies known as TERPS have shown that there is no other possible precision instrument approach in such weather to El Toro, and airliners would have to divert to other airports.  The Marines, by the way, made arrested landings with their carrier hooks in these circumstances.  One County proposal involves landing south, but this can only done in basically good weather from an extremely tight circling approach from over Tustin and north Irvine.  The other problem is that low visibility approaches known as Category 2 and 3 are not possible at El Toro due to terrain.  Category 2 and 3 approaches are a standard feature of nearly all the larger airports in the world.  This means that even moderate fog - which does occur at El Toro - would close the airport.

Q: What about the takeoffs to the east and north like the Marines did? The County says that nearly all takeoffs will be in these directions.

A: Perhaps the biggest safety issue has been the proposed tailwind takeoffs on severely upsloping runways into rising terrain.  No professional pilot in his right mind would ever argue that that such takeoffs are safe -- let alone desirable - because they violate three very fundamental rules of flying.  The Air Line Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade group, have pointed this out quite clearly in their official filings.  Incidentally, it is unusual for these two to be on the same side of an issue.  Even the FAA has not approved such takeoffs.

Q: But we have the impression that the FAA has given its approval to such takeoffs.

A: Readers should understand that, as far as I'm aware, the Flight Standards Branch of the FAA which does the safety and technical certifications of airports and airlines, has never indicated it will permit easterly departures on a runway that violates its standards for air carrier airports.  Both of the east runways -- 7 Left and 7 Right -- exceed FAA standards for slope.  Tom Wall and others who should know better say that a slope of 1.5 per cent "is not considered a restriction for commercial airliners." First of all, the actual slope of the two east runways is 1.53 and 1.57 per cent.  Even if these runways could be made flat as a billiard table - a monumental civil engineering project that would cost billions, not millions - all that would happen would be to make the departure climb gradients even more severe than they already are.

Q: Is there a problem with "climb gradients" at El Toro? What are they anyway?

A: They are the minimum climbing angles required by regulation that an airliner has to make good if an engine fails at the "go-no-go" point during takeoff.  Normally it is about 200 feet per nautical mile.  At El Toro it is over twice that.  The County blandly asserts this isn't a problem, but they are very wrong.  These gradients are extraordinarily steep.  I did an analysis of 167 regular and alternate airports that my airline flies into in the lower 48 states which is virtually all of this country's larger commercial airports.  Only Missoula, Montana and Eagle, Colorado exceed these gradients in their normal departures.  We can - and do -- take off from Missoula and Eagle, but we have to reduce the weights of our airplanes by carrying less fuel and passengers.  Any kind of weather can close the airport down.  The same will be true about El Toro.

Q: I've seen El Toro.  It looks flat to me.  What's so bad about a slope of only one and half per cent?

A: Slope has a tremendously negative effect on aircraft performance.  Of the hundreds of runways I've flown airliners from in a 27-year airline career, not one of them exceeded one per cent.  Indeed, it is a rare runway that exceeds a half per cent slope.  The steepest sloping runway presently used by airliners in this country is Runway 25 Right at Las Vegas, which is slightly less than one per cent uphill.  However at 14,500 feet in length, it is also one of the longest runways in the world! But - and it's an important "but" - Las Vegas does not have the tailwind and terrain problems that El Toro's rather short 8,000 feet easterly runways have.

Q: But we thought the FAA would waiver this slope standard.

A: Why should they? It would expose the government to a huge potential liability if anything happened.  Unfortunately, there have been five takeoff accidents associated with these runways that I am aware of.  In three of them, all aboard died with a total fatality count of close to 200 souls.  There probably have been others.

Q: Okay, but now for argument's sake, let's assume that the FAA bows to political pressures and decides to waive the laws of aerodynamics and common flying sense.  Then wouldn't the airlines be required to use the east and north runways for takeoff as part of the county's proposed "preferential runway" program?

A: No.  Like the FAA, airlines are also required to certify each runway they propose to use.  It's possible the County might bludgeon the airlines into certifying the east and north runways as a sort of dubious "price of admission" to El Toro.  But it's important to note that apart from safety considerations, these runways limit payloads considerably so that this also becomes an economic issue for the airlines.  I doubt that the airlines will ever cut payloads to comply with a "preferential runway" program because that affects their bottom line.  In any case, the pilots won't use them no matter how "preferential" the County says they are.

Q: You mean to say the airline pilots can't be ordered to takeoff to the east and north like the Marines did?

A: Nope.  The Marines were ordered to carry out such idiocy.  As I've mentioned, there was considerable carnage as a result.  I was operations officer of a Phantom squadron at El Toro when the easterly takeoff policy went into effect in late 1968.  We studied it, gulped and then like good Marines, said, "Aye, aye, sir." Most of the time we got away with it because we were flying some of the world's highest performing aircraft at light training weights.  However, unlike military pilots, federal regulation gives the captain of an airliner the final authority as to its operation.  No one can compel me as an airline captain into taking such stupid and unnecessary risks.

Q: Why do you say stupid and unnecessary?

A: My airline uses a simple analogy in training its pilots in risk management.  It's dubbed the "Risk-o-Meter" which is an imaginary dial with green, yellow and red sectors.  One element of risk such as an upsloping runway would put it well into the green.  Add another risk element like unusually steep climb gradients, and the meter goes into the yellow "Caution" area.  Add yet another like tailwinds and the meter hits the red "Warning!" area.

Q: But the County says airliners are capable of doing this, although they do concede there are fuel or payload restrictions.

A: Let me put you in my cockpit for this decision.  The course of action that the County wants me to take is to takeoff east or north, which puts me at the absolute limits of the aircraft with no tolerance for error.  The "Risk-o-Meter" is pegged red! The slightest error -- like an unexpected puff of tailwind -- might result in disaster.  The second course is to takeoff south over Laguna Hills - or even west over Irvine - and it doesn't even wiggle the Risk-o-Meter.  What does a reasonable and prudent captain do? Would you want to be riding as a passenger in an airliner attempting the first alternative? In my view, this is the ultimate showstopper, or if you will, a "fatal flaw".

Q: But surely the County knows about these flaws.

A: Well, there has been no lack of experts pointing them out in official filings. There is an increasingly long list of experts who are waving red flags about the proposed operation including a former Inspector general of the FAA and a former Assistant Administrator of the FAA.  Both the Air Line Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association -- as well as a number of knowledgeable pilots -- who are familiar with the studies have clearly pointed out the technical and safety issues that prevent El Toro from working in its present configuration as proposed by the County.  The County's stance has been to ignore them and not respond to these concerns.
 

Q: What does that leave El Toro with? Could it work at all?

A: Without rebuilding the airport entirely and changing the runway directions, air carriers - including cargo flights - will be forced to operate as they have in the past at El Toro: land north and takeoff south. With opposite direction traffic like this, only relatively few takeoffs and landings per hour are possible.

Q: That's not much of a commercial operation.  Could the airport be rebuilt in some manner so that it would work efficiently and safely?

A: Yes, but it comes with a multibillion dollar price tag and noise footprints that would impact areas of the County that aren't affected now. One airport consultant --Samis & Hamilton -- as well as the Air Line Pilots Association are on record with the only practical runway configurations at El Toro: two parallel runways at least 4,300 feet apart oriented north-northwest and south-southeast.  This configuration would eliminate all the problems I've mentioned earlier.  However, the County has never publicly considered this option.

Q: What's your opinion about the planning process thus far?

A: Instead of being transparent and up front, it's been a curiously opaque process throughout, especially for the technical and safety reports.  These have been unusually superficial and fail to address serious issues like I've mentioned.  Data has been presented in such a manner that it is impossible for experts to cross-check it.  Instead of certifications by the FAA, we get "verbal assurances" by anonymous branches of the FAA.  Perhaps it's politics, I don't know.  I will say, however, that mixing politics with flight safety is a potentially lethal brew.

Sincerely,

Captain Charles J. Quilter II

Click here for more comments on El Toro from airline pilots.

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) supports Captain Quilter's view.