Southwest Will Add Flights at Burbank Despite Noise Disputes

A day after the Los Angeles City Council took action to sue the Burbank airport because of jet noise, the airport’s largest carrier announced expansion plans that will increase daily jetliner traffic by almost 10%.

Southwest Airlines said Wednesday that it will add six round-trip flights to San Jose beginning June 1, in addition to two previously announced daily round trips to Phoenix and Sacramento starting May 10. In total, the new flights will add 16 takeoffs and landings to the 146 the airport now handles each weekday. Eighty of those are Southwest flights.

The airport’s continual growth and the latest schedule expansion have intensified a long feud between airport neighbors, who complain that jet noise has become unbearable and must be limited, and airport officials, who argue that the airport is vital to the economy of the region.

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority voted March 23 to build a 670,000-square-foot terminal, about four times the size of the current facility. The authority was under pressure from the Federal Aviation Administration to replace the terminal because it is closer to the runway than modern safety regulations allow.

In response, the Los Angeles City Council--reacting to noise complaints from San Fernando Valley constituents who live under the airport’s flight paths--voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize city attorneys to file a lawsuit against the airport, arguing that the environmental study prepared for the larger terminal is inadequate.

The motion to file a lawsuit was made by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents a large area of the eastern Valley. He and others have argued that environmental reports for a new terminal did not adequately study the noise increase that will come with the growth in passenger volume and flights.

Some airport critics say they would not oppose a new terminal if it were no larger than the current one and were located in the northwest corner of the airport, because they believe that would encourage pilots to take off over Burbank instead of the East Valley.

Airport officials defend the decisions to increase flights and to build a new terminal, saying they will create jobs and improve a slumping local economy.