FAA Hosted a Community Meeting In Monterey Park on January 24th

Members of the Monterey Park community met with employees of the Federal Aviation Administration at Langley Center to review the Southern California Metroplex Project.

The FAA’s first concern is safety.

The meeting involved graphic maps and computer sites showing various flight plans flying into and out of LAX.

The FAA staff was able to estimate the noise levels on their computer based on your property address. They estimated the noise level under this plan would be reduced to 1.5 decibels or less over our homes in Monterey Park.

The staff spends much of the event addressing questions for each of the residents.

One aircraft controller said that this new plan would make flying safer.

The FAA provided this additional data on the project:

• The Southern California Metroplex Project is a comprehensive plan to improve safety and efficiency by replacing dozens of conventional air routes with routes that are based on cutting-edge satellite navigation.
  • Metroplex initiatives are completed, under way or planned in a dozen metropolitan areas across the country.
• To understand the benefits of satellite technology, it helps to understand the drawbacks of conventional navigation technology.
  • Conventional air routes are built on ground-based navigation aids, such as beacons. These navigation aids are physically planted in the ground, which limits available flight paths.
  • Also, some routes converge and occupy the same airspace, which is occurring in the Southern California area. This requires air traffic controllers to issue complex instructions to pilots to direct aircraft onto more direct routes and to keep them properly separated from one another.
• Satellite technology, by contrast, allows us to build more direct routes as well as routes that are automatically separated from one another. This creates a more efficient system and reduces pilot-controller communications.
• Satellite technology also enables us to create extremely efficient climbs and descents that don’t have the level-offs associated with conventional routes.
  • On the arrival side, for example, we can create descents in which aircraft essentially glide down on idle or near-idle power to their final approaches. Because engines aren’t spooling up and air brakes aren’t being deployed, the plane makes less noise. And gliding down on idle power means less fuel is burned, which in turn means fewer CO2 is being released into the environment.
  • We have seen very significant environmental benefits all over the country where we have implemented these efficient climbs and descents.
• It’s also important to note that what we’re doing today is not an end in itself. These satellite-based routes are laying the foundation for even more improvements down the line.
  • One example of this is a system called Time Based Flow Management. If we know with great certainty where a plane will be at any given time during its flight, we can meter the flow of traffic into a region or an airport starting hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This helps smooth the flow of traffic, reducing bottlenecks and delays.
• Not all aircraft will be flying the new routes as soon as they are implemented. Controllers will still have to occasionally direct aircraft off the routes for weather, safety and sequencing. Also, some aircraft are still not equipped to fly the routes, and some pilots are not qualified to fly the routes. So some flight track dispersion will continue to occur.
  • We expect use of the routes will increase over time.
• Throughout the SoCal Metroplex project area, the vast majority of new routes will have aircraft flying within the areas where they previously flew.
• During our environmental analysis for this project, we modeled noise at about 300,000 locations throughout Southern California. Our modeling found that some areas experience will slight noise decreases, some will experience slight noise increases, and some will experience no changes.
• Our Metroplex website has Google Earth features that allow people to look up projected noise right down to the neighborhood level, as well as current and future flight tracks.
  • There’s an easy to understand tutorial on the website, and we have people here today to show attendees how to use these features.
  • The website address is: http://www.metroplexenvironmental.com/socal_metroplex/socal_introduction.html

The Metroplex Project is scheduled to be rolled out on March 2nd and April 27th.