A LOOK AHEAD * A distant Indian tribe goes to court to challenge a new flight pattern above their lands, giving coastal cities an unlikely ally in . . . The Air War Over LAX Expansion

The small coastal communities battling a burgeoning Los Angeles International Airport have a newfound--if surprising--ally: the Morongo Indians living on a reservation near Palm Springs.

The Morongos are waging a court battle against a little-noted change in LAX landing approach patterns, which became effective last March, that added a second arrival path for planes.

Because the change sends up to 220 jets per day over their remote sacred lands, the Morongos argue through their attorneys, the Federal Aviation Administration should have conducted a full environmental review before implementing the new arrival pattern.

The Morongos allege that the change, formally called the Los Angeles Arrival Enhancement Project, increases airport capacity and should be considered as part of an environmental study on a controversial airport expansion proposal that would nearly double passenger and cargo operations at LAX. They want the new pattern suspended pending a thorough assessment.

The Morongos’ appeal, scheduled for an Aug. 11 hearing in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, opens one more front in an escalating conflict between the increasingly busy airport and growing numbers of neighboring communities.

The issues run the gamut from complaints about current airport operations--now the subject of an unprecedented task force launched earlier this year--to fears that a vastly enlarged airport would ruin their neighborhoods.

“Thank God for the Indians,” said Hermosa Beach Mayor Sam Edgerton, who recently persuaded his colleagues on the City Council to add their city’s voice, in the form of a friend of the court brief, to the Morongos’ appeal of the FAA arrival changes.

In their appeal, the Morongos said that having jets fly over their reservation, even at high altitudes, destroys the “sacred character of the sites historically and currently relied on by tribal members for their religious and cultural practices.”

Because the mountainous reaches of the 32,248-acre reservation are a wilderness, any noise is a far greater distraction than it would be in the city, they argue. The “regular deep rumble overhead throughout the day” and the sight of jet contrails disrupt the sacred places of the Morongos, who “place a high spiritual value on their connection with the natural environment.”

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While it is too late for airport expansion foes to appeal the changes themselves, Edgerton said he is urging like-minded leaders in other communities affected by the growing airport to support the Morongos’ action.

“We can at least let the court know this is a big issue,” said Edgerton, who agrees with the Morongos’ contention that the new arrival arrangement created a de facto expansion without the environmental reviews, public hearings and governmental approvals that are required for the growth envisioned in a new Airport Master Plan being contemplated by Los Angeles officials.

“This is what I call ‘front-running.’ They add capacity in order to make the case for the physical expansion,” Edgerton said. “More planes landing means more planes taking off, and that is where [the beach cities] are being affected.”

The FAA says the changes were made to balance the workload of air-traffic controllers and to relieve congestion-related delays in arrivals and have nothing to do with airport expansion plans. It said its environmental assessment, which included noise analyses and consultations with the Morongos, was sufficient and that the law does not require a full environmental impact survey with mitigation measures, as the appeal contends.

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At issue is the arrival enhancement project, which added a second approach route. Up until March, planes approaching LAX from the east were routed into a single lane and then typically directed to the airport’s southern runway. That made the southern runway approach far busier than the northern one, which typically was used by the smaller volume of planes arriving from the north and west, the FAA said in documents filed in response to the Morongos’ appeal.

By reconfiguring the approach patterns and allowing eastern arrivals to split into two lines farther out, the FAA said, it could even out the volumes on the two approach runways, thus balancing traffic controllers’ workloads, improving safety and increasing efficiency by cutting down on arrival delays.

“The arrival project is independent of LAX expansion because [it] is the result of air-traffic control needs that exist now and that exist regardless of the possible plans for LAX redevelopment,” the FAA said, noting that traffic at the airport has grown dramatically, from nearly 524,000 takeoffs and landings during 1980 to nearly 764,000 in 1996. By the turn of the century, the number is expected to exceed 800,000 a year.

“Nor is the LAX [expansion] dependent upon the arrival project,” the FAA continued, adding that the Morongos’ assertion that building additional ground facilities would be unnecessary without increasing air traffic flow “misses the point that air traffic at LAX will increase, with or without the arrival project.”

FAA spokesman Tim Pile said the new pattern “does not increase the amount of airfield--it reconfigures the way airspace is managed to improve efficiency and maintain safety margins.”

But John R. Shordike, an attorney for the Morongo tribe, said that adding an arrival route is the airborne equivalent of building a new freeway near a congested one.

“A traffic jam by definition precludes growth,” Shordike said. “What they have essentially done is come up with a second parallel freeway.”

Since more planes in means more planes out, the tribe is finding a sympathetic ear in South Bay communities bothered by takeoff noise.

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The Morongos’ appeal of the new approach pattern came just as the FAA-convened Southern California Task Force was getting down to business in its charge to investigate--and try to ameliorate--complaints from throughout the South Bay and stretching as far as Claremont and Monterey Park.

A spokeswoman for LAX, which tracks noise complaint calls, said there was an “uptick” in calls starting in January 1997. And the calls, which used to come primarily from communities adjacent to the airport, began rolling in from Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, several miles south of LAX.

William C. Withycombe, FAA regional administrator, said the one-year task force was formed after U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Torrance) and FAA Administrator Jane Garvey met with local officials and residents and heard many concerns about current operations and the proposed expansion.

He chalked up at least some of the increased complaints to “heightened sensitivity” as residents became aware of the airport’s expansion efforts. But, he acknowledged, FAA scrutiny of radar trackings showed that some planes are straying from departure instructions when they loop east, back over land, after taking off over the ocean.

In this particular pattern, known as LOOP One, jets are supposed to come back directly over the airport at 13,000 feet, “but unfortunately, some are slow performers” and turn back wider and lower than they are supposed to, Withycombe said.

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The regional administrator said the task force has identified eight problem areas, or “projects,” and possible solutions that it hopes to implement before its scheduled disbanding at the end of the year.

FAA representatives will attend a special meeting of the Hermosa Beach City Council, to be scheduled next month, to discuss the work of the task force, the first of its kind in the region. Besides the FAA, it includes airline industry, LAX and local government representatives.

The discussion is likely to include two other resolutions adopted by the council the same night it decided to join the Morongos’ cause. One asked the FAA to modify the LOOP takeoff pattern (and urged neighboring cities to make the same request) and the other directed city staff members to investigate whether appropriate environmental reviews were completed throughout the airport’s development.

“We certainly are trying to do what we can to make the environment a little friendlier. That is part of our responsibility,” Withycombe said, while emphasizing that air safety is the FAA’s top priority.

While FAA and airport officials insist that current operations and expansion plans are separate issues, they know that how they handle the former may well influence the outcome of the latter.

“How we deal with the issues today gives [local residents] some indication of how we would deal with them in the future,” said FAA spokesman Pile.

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A Business LAX

Over the last two decades, air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport has increased dramatically and the growth is expected to continue well into the next century.

Source: Federal Aviation Administration