For anyone who has ever lived in the dorms, the sound of an airplane flying what appeared to be 2 feet from your window was a usual occurrence. Sometimes it’s manageable, sometimes not. It’s definitely irritating late at night or early in the morning when even the slightest creak of a door wakes you up. Even those not living in the dorms hear the familiar roar of an airplane flying overhead once in a while.
Perhaps this alarming sound is a thankful distraction in an otherwise monotonous morning, or maybe it’s a disturbance you’d rather not have. In any case, we are all aware of our small Long Beach Airport located two minutes away from campus. What many of you don’t know is that it might be expanding.
According to an April 21 article in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, city council members are in talks to expand our puny, ’40s-style airport into a modernized and improved structure that can accommodate commuter flights, air traffic control and airport security, among other things. According to longbeach.gov, the Long Beach Airport today is roughly 58,000 square feet and has 41 flights a day, which is the maximum allowed under the noise ordinance. It also has 25 commuter flights a day.
In the fall of 2003, the city council staff presented a project that would increase the size of the airport to approximately 98,000 square feet. JetBlue Airways, the No. 1 commercial airline to fly into our city, loved the idea. But many residents disagreed with the expansions, claiming the noise from more planes would be too much to handle.
This week, city council members will debate yet again on the exact size of the expansion. According to the Press-Telegram article, the architects involved in the expansion have already decided to cut down the size of the original design from 97,545 square feet to 89,995 square feet.
There are many outraged individuals, ranging from people in the Long Beach Unified School District to the region’s Water Replenishment District that claim this expansion will hurt Long Beach residents more than help them. The opponents discuss the fact that there are many schools the planes fly over, not to mention thousands of residential areas that could be affected by the added noise.
But the issue here isn’t about the noise of the airplanes; it’s about the people of Long Beach prioritizing. What is worse? Hearing the familiar hum of an airplane every now and then or driving 30 minutes to an hour to LAX when you could just hop down the street to your charming local airport for that flight to Sacramento?
It seems like people are making a big deal out of nothing. Don’t we want a new and improved airport, with modernized architecture and more flights from neighboring cities like Las Vegas or San Francisco? Don’t we want better parking and fewer lines at the security checkpoint? Then the expansion has to happen, and fast.
There are countless benefits to the airport expansion, including better restaurants and accommodations inside the airport, additional four aircraft parking slots, which will ease “irregular operations caused by mechanical weather delays in other parts of the country,” according to Councilwoman Rae Gabelich on longbeach.gov.
Let’s hope the city council makes the right choice and expand the airport to reach its fullest potential. Being stuck in traffic on the 405 Freeway and being late for an urgent flight is not something we’d like to re-live ever again.
