Evidently I haven’t posted since the end of August. Since that post, I have gotten married, flown to five new countries, and acquired a Roomba. As a whole, I’ve had a pretty good schedule, which means I typically don’t have that many overnights since I like to be home, and thus don’t have much to blog about. That being said, I now find myself in Las Vegas for the second night in a row, but this is not going to be a write up about where to go clubbing, drinking, or score cheap
Thunder from Down Under tickets. This post is about John Wayne.
Most people would say John Wayne is an American icon, a national treasure, a beloved actor who embodied the spirit of a nation, albeit not very good at delivering his lines. But I know a different John Wayne because he is responsible for one of about three different names for an airport that serves Orange County that goes by John Wayne or Orange County or Santa Ana. Take your pick. Now the airport itself is actually not too bad. In fact, I believe it is ranked quite high for a medium sized airport. One does not typically encounter flow delays, occupied gates, or traffic congestion throughout the airport that you would find at LAX. And while its northerly neighbor up in LA county has flights operating around the clock, Orange County/John Wayne/Santa Ana/Disneyland Airport has a curfew that prevents it from having flights depart or arrive late at night.
Well that’s not so bad, right? Wrong. See, the curfew on its own is not that shocking. There are other airports that have them. Where it gets interesting is why such a curfew exists. You are probably thinking to yourself, “Well it’s the noise, of course!” And you would be right, but that’s not the end of our story!
John Wayne/Orange County/Santa Ana/Next Week on the OC Airport has a special departure procedure for all jet aircraft departing off runway 20R. I should emphasize that no other airport in the entire country has a procedure that resembles it in any way. In an attempt to put it simply, a “normal” takeoff at a “normal” airport would involve rolling down the runway at takeoff thrust, climbing away from the runway and keeping the power at or close to this setting until reaching one’s assigned altitude. If you’ve ever flown on a commercial airliner, you have an idea as to what this feels like. For comparison sake, John Wayne requires pilots to hold the brakes at the end of the runway, advance the power to max, release the brakes to make sure that all the passengers are launched into the row behind them, blast off the runway like we have decided at that moment that we would like to go to the moon instead of Las Vegas, and ten seconds later, pitch the nose down while chopping the power back to 78%. The passengers who were pinned against their seats are now thrown forward into their seatbelts and convinced that the plane is going down. Miraculously, it seems like the engines come back to life upon reaching the shoreline. Five passengers do the sign of the cross, three pass out, and a child vomits (unclear if from procedure or from being a disgusting/germ-spreading child).
Is this all necessary? The short answer is no. So why are we doing this ridiculous procedure? “Ooh ooh!, is it noise again?!” Yes, it is! . . .or sometimes. You see, I hadn’t given it much thought until today. 99% of the time, airports in Southern California use a west or southwest flow of traffic as the weather is very consistent. Everyone knows it never rains in Southern California. Today, however, it rained, and it rained all day, and it rained hard. After patting myself on the back for somehow pulling off a smooth landing after an approach to minimums in a rain storm, the tower announced that they were switching runways and continuing operations in the opposite direction. And when we got to the gate and I began setting up to depart from Runway 02L for the first time in my life, it hit me. There was no mandatory noise abatement procedure when departing to the northeast. There was no extensive brief to discuss. It was simply . . .a “normal” takeoff. I admit for a moment I was relieved. It is after all a very obnoxious procedure, and quite task-heavy, and I’m all for making my job easier. But after a moment, I got angry. The whole reason the procedure exists is because people in Newport Beach back in the 1980s complained about noise (aka complained that they had chosen to live off the departure end of an airport, but chose to sue the county because they are people used to getting their way). Spoiler alert: they got their way.
But what about the people off the arrival end in Irvine or Santa Ana? Surely they must encounter aircraft noise as well? Airplanes do make noise when they land. And I should know, I’m a pilot. Did these fine folks just never complain about the noise? Are they deaf? Neither of these scenarios seem likely, so I can only conclude that our politics and government are corrupt and favor the wealthy. I see the (quite literally) one-sided noise-abatement procedure as a sort of micro-sample of the issues that the United States has within its political system. Our elected officials represent those with the biggest pockets, not the biggest problems. As is the case in Orange County, more people live off the approach end as the cities of Santa Ana and Irvine are more densely populated than Newport beach and its multi-million dollar mansions. But despite those in Newport being fewer in number, the politicians chose to listen to the more wealthy of its constituents. After all, these people have more money to give to things like . . . Oh I don’t know . . .congressional campaigns for example. And that type of system is dangerous to democracy. One can ostensibly
buy an election. Both parties are guilty of this, so I’m not targeting a specific group, though to be fair Orange County is fairly conservative. (*Footnote: They did
not vote for Trump. It was the first presidential election since the great depression that Orange County went blue. They may be conservative, but they’re not animals, for god’s sake). Point being, politicians love to pretend that they are the “everyman/woman.” They will show up at a factory, remove their tie and say, “Look everybody! Did you see me partially roll up my sleeves? It shows that I could hypothetically do work!” And for some reason, people keep buying into the illusion.
Most folks will just say, “Ugh, Brian had to ruin a perfectly good sarcastic post with his political soap-boxing.” Politics and religion are taboo topics, they say. But if we don’t discuss these things, we (the
actual everyman/woman) have no voice. I am not famous or influential and certainly not wealthy, so my only outlet is bloggery. That way I can reach the staggering audience of three people. And gosh darn it, that’s more than nothing. As the duke himself would say, “There’s right and there’s wrong. Y’gotta do one or the other, do the other and you may be walking around, but you’re dead as a beaver hat.”
