BOAC Votes to Begin EIR process for LAX North Field
Yesterday The Board of Airport Commissioners voted to begin the EIR process with respect to reconfiguring the LAX north flight field with a two year time frame.
In the mean time LAX gets no enhanced ground radar, no runway status lights, and the critical shortage of air traffic controllers in the LAX tower continues.
NATCA-LAX (Mike Foote) testified before City Council last week that the proposed 360 foot north project would perhaps mitigate five percent of the incursions at LAX (one out of twenty-five).
"We keep hearing that the FAA has enough controllers. They hired 1800 new controllers last year, or so they claim. That’s a lie because they really only hired 1,800 people to be controller TRAINEES, and 40 of them actually got signed off as controllers, the other 1,760 of them (that’s 97.9%) are either still training, or they quit from the FAA.
So here is my challenge to the FAA. Quit scheduling overtime. Let controllers decide whether or not to work it. Make it truly and totally optional.
Hank Krakowski claims there are enough controllers in this video."
On New Years day the Editorial Board of the LA Times refered to LAX neighbors as NIMBYs. This was the second time the Times chose to lower itself to petty namecalling in less than a month. Outraged LAX neighbors respond:
"The buck stops at the White House and President Bush needs to wake up and take a hard look at air traffic controller staffing, since he has oversight of the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)," said Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl recently.
A well financed public relations campaign is currently being waged by LAWA and their allies to deceive the public into believing LAX is losing business to other cities. The facts show this just isn't true.
