June 14, 2014
Opinion
Editor:
Your paper has published many letters from Santa Monica Airport supporters.
How many of the SMO supporters actually live under the airport flight path?
We in the flight path wonder if they worry about their children and grandchildren, whose lungs are more susceptible, since the youth are playing in their schoolyards and parks under the flight path.
Likewise, are the pro aviation folk concerned that their elderly parents are exposed to lung contaminates from SMO?
We wonder if they ever feel like they live on an Air Force base or in a residential airpark.
Something tells us the SMO fan club does not hear the oncoming roar, the blast overhead and the receding roar- the Doppler effect to the max.
The flying community’s letters and their praise for the airport do not mention the downsides of SMO, maybe there aren’t any for them.
Maybe it is location, location, location.
The irony of SMO is that it is laid out to direct the majority of flights over Venice and West LA, not over its mother city.
The southernmost part of Ocean Park gets some SMO noise and pollution, but most of it goes to areas outside Santa Monica.
If there were a map showing where SMO supporters lived, and that map was overlaid with the SMO flight paths, the overlay would be revealing.
Would there be a 75 percent overlap of flight path and supporters? Or would it be 50 percent or as low as 5 percent?
Your airport, in this surveillance age, does not record noise levels and pollution in its flight path, but only on or very near the airport itself.
Angel Flights do not erase the health damages of plane traffic on the flight path populace.
SMO measures sound levels and some pollution at takeoff. Too bad what happens after that.
Altitude over the beach community is not monitored.
There are no listings of the purposes of the flights or instances of practice landings posted.
Take off and landing stats don’t count the actual overhead endless training loops of the flight schools.
There are no remote real time video/audio cams showing the planes loudly buzzing residences at very low altitudes.
The airport supporters don’t use empirical evidence against noise and pollution findings in their letters to SMDP.
Their spin is all fluff and selective margin statistics, like a big cotton candy puff posing as a healthy life saving nurturing elixir.
As I write, flight schools circle above with a loud drone and louder jets zoom overhead in intervals that are as close as a few minutes.
My family lives in an area of Venice where the early 1900’s buildings and the community along the oceanfront pre-date SMO.
In the 1950s and 60s the use of the airport was radically different; far fewer flights and no jets it seemed.
There was no indication of repeated circling by multiple flight schools.
Memorial Day flights might be a Veterans’ tribute show, but not a private flight school buzzing and buzzing in continual overhead circles.
By 1980, when I worked on Airport Way, we could eat lunch outside looking at the airport, without noise and pollution intrusions.
We used natural open window ventilation most of the year with no excessive dirt or dust.
With the Santa Monica and SMO growth came all the calming strips, stoplights, queue lanes, and bike lanes to try to mitigate traffic growth on land.
However, nothing effective was done about the traffic in the sky.
It is doubtful that the flying community, during their down time, is forced to stop talking or listening as a plane booms and its shadow blocks out the sunlight while dowsing pollution on them.
At night, we wonder if the SMO fan club sees plane lights through their closed blinds as the planes approach with a roar.
When on foot at the Santa Monica Place, the Promenade, or the Pier, flying aficionados don’t get strafed, buzzed or blasted by planes.
At the Pier, if a plane descends low, chances are that it is part of a training exercise for the armed forces or firefighters.
On the other hand, I routinely walk home from Wilshire along the beach or from the 20th Street Medical Center, or Yahoo at Cloverfield on Broadway, to near Google on Rose & Main in Venice.
On the walks I encounter no airplanes overhead until I get to the area where POP once stood at the end of Pier Avenue in Ocean Park.
By the way, planes did not strafe tourists at the original Pacific Ocean Park; tourists in the Venice/POP beach area now seem to duck and then stare in disbelief at the aerial assaults.
All one has to do is run, swim and surf in the Venice and the former POP site to see and hear the air traffic of take offs and circling.
Out in the ocean, when the Santana winds blow there is a view from a surfboard of the reckless landing approaches to ‘Clover Field,’ a low landing sound and fury others farther inland endure the remainder of the year.
Those of us under the flight path wish that remote cameras picked up the flights and broadcast virtual reality sounds and visuals to all airport supporters in their homes and workplaces. Then they could experience the realities of SMO.
The pro SMO letters read like ethereal diaphanous winds of bouncing pom-poms.
The pro airport letters to SMDP pay no attention to quality of life issues.
Cory Zaun
North Beach Venice
Source: http://smdp.com
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