Controversy Muted at Airport Open House

It was all smiles at ’s open house Saturday, a one-day truce in the battle over the facility’s future.

That multi-sided scrap has recently been marked by:

• The chair of the Airport Commission, which he said failed to meet the community's expectations.
• Criticism of the Airport Commission from the city manager and city attorney ."
• The between anti-noise and anti-air pollution activists on one hand, and operators of jets and flights schools on the other.

But the arguments were nearly muted at the four-hour open house. Among other notable sights on the sunny-but-windy day was Airport Commission Chairman Richard Brown getting a 15-minute personal lesson in a flight simulator from Joe Justice, a flight school owner.

While Airport Director Robert Trimborn personally conducted 15-minute tours of the airfield on a mini-bus, Martin Rubin, director of Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution (CRAAP), quietly handed out flyers to visitors signing in at the airport’s administration building.

Although the airport is often the site of special events, this was the first city-sponsored open house, Trimborn said. The city billed the event as part of its visioning process for SMO’s future after 2015 when the current operating agreement with the FAA expires. (The FAA disputes that).

On the other hand, Rubin called the open house "an effort to sway public opinion toward keeping the airport open in 2015.’’ Rubin said his job was to "inform people of the credible scientific results from studies regarding what’s coming out of the jets as well as the lead from the piston aircraft."

On the observation deck behind the administration building, excited children played with model planes and joined their parents in watching the real things— from jets to biplanes—take off and land.

Don Westland, of Marina del Rey, said he wanted to show his kids the airport.

"The community is lucky to have it," he said.

Culver City visitor Richard Colback also brought his family and enjoyed the tour saying, "it’s almost a luxury to have access to such a facility."

Pilot John Mongiello, on a three-month visit to Santa Monica, said there’s "controversy surrounding every airport."

"It has to be a cooperative effort," he said. "Both sides need to see the benefits and some of the negatives of the airport."

A few hundred yards from the administration building, the group Friends of Santa Monica Airport sponsored a cookout at Joe Justice’s flight school. Justice contends he’s working with the city to "give the neighborhood some relief’’ from the pattern flying associated with flight schools, and he floated a unique idea.

"If the city wanted us to fly [our students] to another airport and do repetitive pattern work [there], that would cost the student money,’’ Justice said.

"If the city compensates the student for that, the city could reduce the pattern work here," he said, adding that the cost would be cheap compared to what the city spent on lawyers in its futile effort to ban class C and D jets from the airport.

Some 170 visitors signed in for the open house, nearly all of them bringing at least one other person, according to Susan Cline, Assistant Director of Public Works. "We estimate more than 400 total visitors," she said.