Sounding Off:

I will attempt to offer something helpful to all of us affected by John Wayne Airport: a history lesson in changing flight patterns.

My observations are from where I have lived in Newport Beach. My first residence, from 1964 to 1980, was on Toyon Lane, in what is loosely known as the Dover Shores area. My second was from 1980 to 1984 on Harbor Island. My third, from 1988 to 1995, was on Lincoln Lane, also in Dover Shores. My fourth is also in Dover Shores, on Galaxy Drive, where I have lived since 1995.

Jet traffic initially used a flight path that was a relatively straight departure from then-Orange County Airport’s runway, Runway 19R, meaning a 190-degree direction. They flew over much of the Dover Shores area and generally exited over the Coast Highway Bridge and the Turning basin in the Lower Bay. Two things brought the first change in direction: a growing and more powerful lobby from the Airport Working Group and residents, and the city of Newport. These influences, and perhaps the hot engine part that started a roof fire in Dover Shores, helped push the governmental agencies to alter departures, part of which was to have planes turn earlier and fly down the center of the Upper Bay, still departing over the Coast Highway Bridge.

The very good reason for this is the noise from that era’s loud jet engines would not be over people’s heads. They would not drop any hot engine parts onto roofs. And best of all, engine noise would not be pointed directly at the residents on either side of the Upper Bay as the route was mostly parallel to the houses. In addition, the flights also began a steeper ascent to gain altitude and reduce noise before flying over or near residential areas. Lastly, noise restrictions on aircraft type were adopted.

They were still mid-bay and exiting the Upper Bay area over the Coast Highway Bridge and Promontory Point Apartments into the ’80s and ’90s.

So what changed? El Toro Marine Air Station. Southern California, and more specifically Los Angeles and Orange County airspace, is the busiest geographic airspace in the world. El Toro controlled wide areas of airspace immediately south of us to accommodate fast and loud military jets.

We also have Long Beach Airport. Further north is Los Angeles International Airport. The thing to keep in mind with these other airports is that planes arrive and depart from all directions. And the traffic is three dimensional as planes also are climbing out of and descending into all airports. The Federal Aviation Administration’s objective is to spread these corridors out and away from each other as much as possible to avoid having planes and jets collide.

How can El Toro be critical to Dover Shores and Irvine Terrace? Because it closed. When it did, it opened up airspace and routes that were off limits previously. So what did the FAA do? Because the objective of air corridors is safety, and safety means spreading the planes out as much as possible, the agency seized upon the opportunity to turn the departing commercial jets farther to the south into the newly available airspace before disbursing them to their destinations.

The departure chart for JWA instructs the pilot to begin, a gentle 10 degrees to 15 degrees by the way, to turn to their left when they are one mile from the airport. This path would take them down the traditional mid-bay route. What actually happens is, shortly after takeoff, the control tower hands them off to the controllers of the departure and arrival corridors. This takes a minute, as the jets fly past the one-mile point. By the time they make contact and begin to turn they have flown four or five miles, instead of one, and entered the Dover Shores residential area. Then they begin and end their turn deep into and over our houses at much lower altitudes than those residents farther downstream.

If we in Dover and the Terrace want to change it, here is how. It is plausible for the control tower at JWA to instruct the pilots to begin their very small turn before handing them off. There are at least two pilots to handle this very minor, but historically more used, change.

To address any safety questions, they have headsets and the microphone toggle is on the “wheel.” The compass and flight instruments are right in front of them. They don’t have to take their hands off the wheel for any of it. Some private jets have only one pilot and handle it easily without any “rushing.” Without question two can do it. The flaps have already been adjusted and the wheels are up upon liftoff. Likely by the co-pilot. As many of you know, there is only one other item after takeoff, which is a throttle adjustment for noise. The pilots love to complain about this, but there have been zero safety issues. A proper path over water was done for almost two decades, and it can be done again now.

CRAIG LYONS lives in Newport Beach.