Roar Heralds Night-Landing Practice

Neighborhoods around the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro will experience increased noise during the evening this week as fighter aircraft practice simulated night carrier landings, base officials announced.

FA-18 Hornet jets based at El Toro hold night practice sessions several times a year, Maj. Jim McClain said. The fighters will be landing on a runway lighted and marked like the deck of an aircraft carrier from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. through Wednesday.

Carrier landing practice is particularly bad for those with sensitive ears because “there is a two- to three-hour period of constant roar with no break,” Lt. Col. Gary Albin said.

Albin defended the exercises as essential preparation for young pilots who next must land on aircraft carriers at sea.

“It’s just like the boat but without the pitch and roll,” Albin said.

The Marines selected El Toro as a landing strip in 1942 in part because it was close enough to the ocean that pilots could practice carrier landings at sea. At that time, the air station was in an isolated rural area and planes were powered by less noisy propellers.

Today, the thunderous screams of low-flying Marine Corps jets reverberate in the closely packed housing tracts around the base. The air station receives about 500 noise complaints a year, Albin said.

He said complaints come from Laguna Hills, Turtle Rock in Irvine, Modjeska in the foothills to the east, and other areas around the base.

In the carrier simulation exercise each pilot makes five to eight “touch-and-go” landings at the air field.

After taking off toward Saddleback Mountain on east-west Runway 7 and flying out over the ocean, the jets come in over Laguna Hills and the Leisure World community, flying low over the Santa Ana Freeway on approach to north-south Runway 34.

But instead of stopping, the planes touch down on the runway and immediately take off again, turning left toward Jeffrey Road, making a circle over the freeways and the Wild Rivers theme park before coming back to land on Runway 34 again.

McClain said the jet noise will affect the local neighborhoods in east Irvine, Laguna Hills and El Toro.

Individuals who wish to file a noise complaint with the El Toro Air Station should call the operations duty officer at (714) 726-3830 for fixed-wing aircraft or (714) 726-7884 for helicopters, Albin said.