Opposes Increase In Jetliner Flights

This horrible crash between a jetliner and a small plane should put an end to the insensitive ventures of the Long Beach City Council and the FAA, and their ideas on how to wipe out a beautiful city by increasing jetliner flights in the middle of a municipal airport that already has about 900 daily flights of small planes, making it the eighth busiest airport.

Not meant for jetliner passenger traffic, the (airport) began with zero in 1981, and we can still remember the FAA telling everyone here that this airport could handle 144 jetliners plus the 900 small planes, and they could take the airport over if we did not want to do it. Such bull.

The CAA and CAB decided in 1952 that municipal airports would be in the city limits, and the major airports would be away from these small planes and the city congestion. What is the City Council doing? Are we competing with LAX? It does not add up to a weekly payroll of $2 million that an industrial park would give us in Long Beach, as I suggested. It would be much quieter and safer too for everyone.

Shouldn’t the FAA be doing more to prevent accidents and increase safety?

Shouldn’t the courts and the airlines quit playing politics with Long Beach? I opposed the environmental impact report because it mixed small planes and jetliners, which are incompatible. The planning commissioners and the City Council passed it without reading it (the EIR), and ignored my attempts to invalidate it, based upon an incompatible mix. It is murder to plan so carelessly.

--LOU ROBILLARD

Long Beach