Letter: Right-turn flight path will only get worse

Thursday, May 10, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

Regarding the Las Vegas Sun's May 9 editorial "Making the wrong turn":

Clark County's inflexible approach to the problems created by the right-turn flight path out of McCarran International Airport ignores consideration of measures that could ameliorate some of this damage without redirecting traffic over other areas of the valley:

(1) The county and the FAA could impose procedures to reduce noise while planes are taking off. We know this can be done, because planes that fly in the middle of the night ease off the throttle and are much quieter as they leave the valley. Steeper trajectories while the planes are in the initial takeoff stage over industrial areas could also be implemented, as in Orange County, Calif.

(2) A flight path that proceeds west for approximately one minute longer would place the flights over unpopulated areas and beyond the Red Rock recreation area. The small additional cost for this will not stop visitors from coming to Las Vegas.

The city of Las Vegas' efforts to discuss such reasonable measures are ignored outright by the county and the FAA. The county falsely claims that the city is trying to put tourism out of business while it and the FAA won't even discuss solutions to the nuisance they have created. The city is responding because these planes are a real problem for those of us living under the flight path. The FAA "comment period" may be over, but this problem will only get worse as the number of flights increases.

A more careful review would show the Sun's editorial board that most of the flights are over decidedly middle-class neighborhoods and not Summerlin or other wealthy neighborhoods. This whole process bears an eerie resemblance to the selection of Nevada for the nuke dump, and it will only get worse if the county gets its way. We need to get the county and the FAA engaged in finding solutions.

Lawrence D. Rouse, Las Vegas

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