John Wayne Airport

Threat at JWA turns out to be a hoax An anonymous bomb threat at John Wayne Airport, which was phoned in to the Irvine Police Department on Tuesday afternoon, turned out to be a hoax, officials said. The call reportedly came in at 12:33 p.m., said Justin McCusker, spokesman for John Wayne Airport. "Airport officials and Orange County Sheriff's deputies did a search and determined there was no credible threat," he said. McCusker said the threat did not cause any delays.

Newport Beach City Manager Homer Bludau has written a clear, concise statement about the settlement agreement, which limits passenger growth at John Wayne Airport ("Pride in airport deal is deserved," Feb. 9). His letter should serve as a reference for Newport Beach residents who care about the expansion of John Wayne Airport. We all should be proud of the consensus reached with the city, the Airport Working Group and Stop Polluting Our Newport in achieving this settlement agreement, which limits passenger expansion at John Wayne Airport to 10.3 million by 2011 and 10.8 million by Jan. 2, 2016.

There are city council elections coming up in both Newport Beach and Costa Mesa and candidates soon will express their will. Which candidates will be chosen? Those for the status quo, or those for radical changes in John Wayne Airport overflights? Here are some candidate questions. 1. Do you believe that John Wayne Airport overflights over Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are a serious threat to our quality of life? 2. Do you believe that aviation noise should be restricted to provide the greatest good for the greatest number?

There is something decidedly disquieting about Joe Bell’s The Bell Curve (“Airport’s change for the worse,” Oct 15). He calls for a goal to stop expansion of John Wayne Airport while raising the level of discourse about permanent curfew and passenger caps. His argument is based on a $652-million terminal improvement, but he ignores the land-locked nature of dinky John Wayne Airport which can not grow much even if caps were abandoned, and he assumes the airplanes always will depart over Newport Beach, a big mistake in the initial design of that airport.

-- Andrew Glazer JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT -- No flights will be canceled or delayed because of mandatory airplane inspections by the Federal Aviation Administration, an airport spokeswoman said Friday. On Friday, the FAA ordered all airlines to allow them to inspect MD-80, MD-90, DC-9 and 717 jetliners -- about one-fifth of the nation's passenger airline fleet. The Alaska Airlines plane that crashed and killed all 88 of its passengers 20 miles north of Los Angeles last month was a MD-80.

John Wayne Airport has struck a deal with Air Canada to start offering service in April, airport officials said. The one-flight-a-day service to Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport is scheduled to begin April 6, said John Wayne Airport spokeswoman Jenny Wedge. The expansion into Orange County is one of seven new additions for the Canadian airline, which will be flying to 55 U.S. destinations by summer, according to an Air Canada news release. JWA does not have U.S. customs enforcement; all of that will be handled on the Canadian side, Wedge said.

The Transportation Security Administration has awarded John Wayne Airport an $8.8-million grant to equip the future Terminal C with a baggage handling and screening system for check-in luggage, airport officials said in a news release Friday. The grant will allow the airport to purchase technology to scan bags for dangerous materials, such as explosives, airport officials said. The in-line baggage handling system should be up and running by late 2011, they said. They said the technology will screen bags for explosives while keeping the ticketing and boarding process as efficient as possible, airport officials said.

The number of passengers using John Wayne Airport in August was up 7.2% compared with the same month in 2006, according to airport officials. It was the 11th consecutive month of increased passenger levels, airport statistics show. While the passenger count for August 2007 hit 946,426, the number of takeoffs and landings for all types of aircraft last month went down 10.3% compared with the previous year. Airport operations are governed by a legal settlement that caps passengers at 10.3 million a year through 2010.

The number of passengers using John Wayne Airport in June increased compared with the same month in 2006, the ninth straight month passenger levels have climbed. In June, a total of 900,969 people traveled through the airport, which was 5.7% more than in June 2006, according to airport statistics. The total number of aircraft operations — all takeoffs and landings — last month was 29,068, a decrease of 6.2% over the same month of 2006. Total aircraft operations have gone down four months in 2006, with increases in February and March.

For Ethan Wayne, the difference between the names John Wayne Airport, Orange County; Orange County John Wayne Airport and Orange County Airport is vast. The youngest son of the late actor and longtime Newport Beach resident John Wayne said in an interview Friday he fears the Orange County Tourism Council is trying to strip the airport of the Wayne name in favor of a more geographical moniker. “My family and I are disappointed and opposed to the recent rumblings of the Orange County Tourism Council to change the name of ‘John Wayne Airport’ to ‘Orange County Airport,’” Wayne wrote in an e-mail Friday.