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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Night Noise Focus of Jet Program

By MARK R. MADLER Staff Reporter The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners received an update at its March 5 meeting on how Van Nuys Airport is handling noise issues. Part of the update from Samantha Bricker, chief environmental and sustainability officer for Los Angeles World Airports, was a recommendation from staff on a new program to address noise from jets. Flora Margheritis, airport manager at Van Nuys, said the airport commissioners would not have to take a formal vote on the recommendation to implement the Van Nuys Airport Quieter Nights program. “My takeaway is that the board is in support of this program, which involves us working with the tenants and the aircraft operators and encouraging them not to fly between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.,” Margheritis said in an interview with the Business Journal. The Quieter Nights program includes both jet departures and arrivals. Originally, when the staff at Van Nuys started talking with the jet operators, the program was meant to address just departures. “But we recognized we needed to do more because we have the community factor,” Margheritis said. The next step for the program – which Margheritis said was intentionally not called a voluntary curfew – is for Van Nuys to work with Bricker and her team to finalize details of how the airfield is going to implement the program and when it will go into effect. One of the big questions from the board of airport commissioners was that they would like LAWA staff to provide quarterly reports on the progress of the program, she added. “That is something that Samantha is going to be doing for the next several months so they can gauge how successful the program is and if it is working or not,” Margheritis continued. “Then we will take it from there.” The decision to not call the Quieter Nights program a voluntary curfew was done to not confuse it with a mandatory nighttime curfew that prohibits jet departures between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Regardless of the name, the outcome will be the same, Margheritis said. “The goal is to reduce nighttime jet operations, but it is going to be implemented in a different way with their willingness to participate in this program,” she added.

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