Orange County Register, October
2, 1998
From the Register web site at http://www.ocregister.com
FAA critic questions county's plans for two-airport
system
BASE REUSE: The former federal official predicts that if El Toro opens, John Wayne will be forced to close.
October 2, 1998
By MARY ANN MILBOURN The Orange County Register
LAKE FOREST — El Toro airport opponents who have questioned the feasibility and safety of a two-airport system won support Thursday from a former U.S. Department of Transportation official invited to speak here.
Mary Schiavo, former inspector general for the Transportation Department and a Federal Aviation Administration critic, predicted at a news conference that a joint El Toro-John Wayne airport system will never happen.
She said the seven miles that separate the two airports will make it difficult to keep airplanes from crossing flight paths. Airlines that don't want to split their operations between two airports also can be expected to pressure the FAA not to allow John Wayne and El Toro to operate together.
Schiavo predicted that John Wayne and El Toro would follow Denver's model, under which Stapleton Airport closed when the new Denver International Airport opened.
"I'll bet what the FAA does is when the lights go on at (El Toro), the lights will go off at the other," she said.
Ellen Cox Call, county spokeswoman on El Toro reuse planning, said no problems with airspace or airlines are anticipated.
The county's plan calls for El Toro and John Wayne to handle commercial flights. Long-distance domestic and international flights would use El Toro. John Wayne would be limited to trips of less than 500 miles.
Schiavo said the public should not be comforted by county promises that El Toro will not be allowed to operate unless it meets FAA standards. Those standards, she said, only provide for the minimum safety levels.
She said airports of the future are expected to have runways that are much longer and much more widely separated, with no obstacles at the end.
El Toro, she said, fails in all those cases because the runways crisscross, are only 700 feet apart and head into the hills in two directions. Those factors will so limit the number of flights that the county will be forced to change its plan, Schiavo said.
"I don't think these will be your runways," she said. "I'm fairly confident they will have to be redone."
County planners don't believe the runways are a problem.
"The Marines have been using these runways for 50 years, and all the studies say these runways are perfectly safe and more than adequate to meet our needs," Call said.
Schiavo, a former federal prosecutor, is now an Ohio State University professor. She was visiting Orange County as the guest of the South Orange County Regional Chambers of Commerce and the Orange County Business Coalition, both of which oppose the El Toro airport.
She wrote "Flying Blind, Flying Safe," a best-selling book about the FAA's shortcomings in ensuring aircraft and airport safety, after her six years as DOT inspector general.