LETTER TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 1997
* Re "Wrong Ideas Imperil Airport Plan," Orange County Voices (March 23):
As a captain for a major airline and a former jet squadron commander at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, I must disagree with retired Marine Col. Norman Ewers on two issues regarding proposed takeoffs to the east from El Toro by commercial jet airliners.
Over a 20-year period I made hundreds of takeoffs to the east while I was based there in the Marines. Nearly all of these violated three very basic rules of flying: I took off with the wind instead of into the wind, uphill instead of downhill, and into rapidly rising terrain instead of away from it. Even though I was flying high-performance aircraft, there were times when I was barely able to get airborne. Why would I have done such a stupid thing, and worse, for so many times?
The answer is that I was ordered to. I was a Marine, and I carried out that order. However, what is important to know about the future of El Toro is that, unlike military pilots, airline pilots cannot be compelled to take unnecessary risks.
In fact, to promote safety and to protect pilots from unscrupulous airline and airport operators, aviation regulations have always given the pilot in command final authority as to the operation of an aircraft.
It has nothing to do with "pilots' turf and pride." It has everything to do with safety. This explains why no civilian jet transport--or even military jet transport for that matter--has ever been flown off to the east or to the north at El Toro, to my knowledge. Incidentally, the C-130 military transport that Ewers once took off in to the east is not a jet aircraft and does not have the same performance requirements as civilian airliners.
Airline captains are required by law to fly in a safe and prudent manner. No commercial pilot in his right mind is going to risk his career--let alone his own life and those of his passengers--by attempting such an inherently hazardous takeoff as proposed by El Toro's planners.
Regarding takeoffs to the north: For what it's worth, the only jet transport I know of that ever attempted to take off to the north did so and crashed in 1965. All aboard were killed.
Ewers notes that downwind landings at LAX after midnight rated a "black star" from the Air Line Pilots Assn. In fact it was the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Assns.--that is to say, all of the world's airline pilots--that deplored this compromise of safety.
My own view is that it is one thing to carry out a downwind landing on an exceptionally long runway over flat terrain; it is quite another to carry out a downwind, uphill takeoff into terrain from a relatively short runway. I cannot imagine the Federal Aviation Administration or the airlines ever certifying such a procedure as safe, let alone permissible.
Ewers is correct in stating that takeoffs to the west over Irvine would be much safer. Indeed, that is how we flew fighter jets from El Toro up to 1969, when we were ordered to reverse the takeoff direction, if not the laws of physics, because of noise impacts on the new city of Irvine.
From a performance and safety standpoint, the best takeoff direction is to the south, which is the direction that virtually all jet transports have used when departing El Toro. Unfortunately, the only practical landing direction is to the north, and there's the rub: You cannot have airplanes landing and taking off in opposite directions from the same runway at the same time. This alone dooms El Toro's viability as a commercial airport.
For some time, both the airlines and the airline pilots have been saying that El Toro in its present runway configuration is not going to work. Maybe it's time to listen to what they are saying.
CHARLES J. QUILTER II
Laguna Beach
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