L.A. mayor weighs in on curfew

GLENDALE — The public comment period on a proposed curfew at Bob Hope Airport ended Friday with a flood of opposition coming from Los Angeles City Hall, where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the proposed nighttime ban is counterproductive and improper.

But support for the ban still heavily outweighed opposition to the proposal, airport officials said.

The crux of Villaraigosa’s opposition, which came in the form of a letter he wrote to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, centered on a slew of flights that are projected to shift from Bob Hope to six regional airports if the ban on flights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. is approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.

If the ban is enacted, more than 30 flights will be rerouted to Van Nuys Airport and five flights to Los Angeles International Airport. Other flights will be transferred to airports in Ontario, Long Beach, Camarillo and Pacoima, airport officials said.

“I believe it is both inappropriate and ill-timed for Bob Hope to unilaterally pursue an overnight curfew that will increase the very noise impacts at those airports that Bob Hope is looking to reduce,” Villaraigosa wrote.

But Bob Hope Airport spokesman Victor Gill said that the nighttime noise transfer to Van Nuys would be minimal and that support for the proposed ban is still voluminous.

At an airport authority-run public meeting in May, officials recorded 166 public comments with more than 120 supporting the proposed ban and 33 against the measure.

The authority will wait until its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday to present a more updated picture on the number of comments received, but “it’s going to run double that in terms of individual parties,” Gill said.

After that meeting, the authority plans to review the comments it has received and conduct more research on issues that need to be studied en route to eventual submission to the FAA, which could be in August, Gill said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas and corporate aviation groups and businesses that stand to be affected by the shifting operations have also spoken out against the proposal.

Cardenas, whose district includes Van Nuys Airport, asked the Los Angeles City Council on Friday to support a proposition against the proposed ban.

Burbank Mayor Dave Golonski and the airport authority’s Interim Executive Director Dan Feger implored the council to reject the measure.