More Noise From Jets? -- Sea-Tac Plan To Start Tomorrow
Starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow, the Federal Aviation Administration will implement its controversial flight plan for jets using Seattle Tacoma-International Airport, the agency said today.
Under the new plan, Sea-Tac will have the capacity to handle 60 landings per hour from the north compared with 42 now.
Temple Johnson, the FAA's manager for air traffic for the Northwest Mountain Region, said an environmental assessment by the agency has determined that the changes would cause no noise effects in the areas immediately surrounding the airport.
Community activists, however, claim the changes will bring more noise to thousands of homes in the Puget Sound area. Much of the Eastside and northeast Seattle neighborhoods such as Laurelhurst and View Ridge would gain noise, they say. Representatives from Magnolia and other neighborhoods facing Puget Sound say they would have less noise.
A variety of community groups, the city of Seattle and some Eastside cities have previously raised the possibility of filing a lawsuit to block the plan. They have insisted that no significant changes be made to jet routes without first conducting a formal environmental-impact statement.
``We'll have to wait and see what they do,'' said Johnson. ``Sometimes that's just posturing.''
Bob Klug, co-chairman of the aircraft-noise group of the Seattle Community Council Federation, said he would talk with the group's lawyer today. He did not know whether his group would sue. He said his group has previously said that if the city sues, it would join the city's suit.
A spokesman for Seattle Mayor Norm Rice said there would be no comment until his office saw details of the FAA's plan.
Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran said the City Council was previously scheduled to discuss the FAA's proposal with him today. He would not say if the city could sue.
Johnson said litigation may be less likely following agreement Saturday night by the Port of Seattle's Noise Mediation Committee. The group representing the port, community representatives and airline-industry representatives agreed on a package of measures that could reduce noise generated on the ground and in the air by as much as 50 percent over the next 10 years.
The committee failed to agree on flight paths. Johnson said aviation representatives agreed to the restrictions on night-time flights and the use of noisier planes in order to get the new plan. Neil Bennett, assistant director of the western regional office for the Air Transport Association, told the committee that his group would withdraw from the agreement if anyone successfully sued the FAA over the plan.
Called the ``four-post'' plan, the change involves using four turning points for planes arriving and departing Sea Tac. The FAA proposal calls for adding a new southerly arrival route that involves increasing flights over neighborhoods north and east of Seattle during periods of clear weather and winds from the south.
It also has proposed changes in northerly departures that affect Seattle and Eastside neighborhoods. Sixty percent of landings at Sea-Tac are from the north.
During periods of clear weather such northeast Seattle neighborhoods as Laurelhurst, Ravenna, View Ridge and Northgate will gain up to 120 flights a day under the plan.
For a comparable period, the Eastside, from Auburn to Redmond, will gain 60 flights a day.
No wholesale changes in regional flight patterns are planned for landings from the south.
The central thrust of the changes is to divert about one-third of the southbound arrivals from a narrow flight path that travels over Elliott Bay. That path was designated in the early 1970s to confine noise to a limited area, Johnson said.
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Jets will approach Sea-Tac over Seattle
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About one-third of southbound arrivals will be diverted from the west to a path heading sout, roughly over Interstate 5, into Sea-Tac.
About 51 jets from the southeast will fly over Kent, a 11,000 feet, descend to about 5,000 feet over Bellevue, and turn into Sea-Tac just north of the Evergreen Point Bridge.
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Bo Hok Cline / Seattle Times