Letters.

A Regional Airport Solution

Christopher Woodard's article, "Airlines Aren't High on Plans to Boost Palmdale" (Oct. 18), ignored the excessive congestion and pollution in the neighborhoods surrounding Los Angeles International Airport. Blindly expanding LAX on its 3,500 acres is like trying to put a size-12 foot into a size-6 shoe; one size does not fit all. Expanding LAX only makes a bad situation worse while failing to meet our growing air transportation needs.

The population, size and geography of Los Angeles County require a regional approach to airport expansion. Los Angeles County covers 4,200 square miles, where 10 million people reside in 88 cities and 137 unincorporated communities. Continuing to overdevelop a single airport in an undersized western corner of this vast region makes no sense.

The communities in and around Palmdale and Ontario support the development of these facilities. Expanding regional air transportation facilities at these airports would ease congestion and reduce pollution at LAX by providing for the transportation needs of the 6.5 million people residing in the San Gabriel, Pomona, Antelope, Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, as well as our neighbors in San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside Ventura and Kern counties.

Adjacent to the Palmdale property is Plant 42, an Air Force facility with a fully functional terminal, runways that could immediately be utilized to handle cargo, and airplane maintenance facilities. Additionally, Plant 42 has a joint-use agreement with the Los Angeles World Airport Commission to provide up to 400 flights daily. This site could also accommodate 50 flights daily starting tomorrow and could be a vital first step toward a regional concept of air transportation.

Airlines will opt to serve airports that are the most accessible to their passengers, who will choose their nearest airport rather than being funneled into a congested LAX.

MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH 

Supervisor, Fifth District

County of Los Angeles

Airlines Short-Sighted

In regard to the story "Airlines Aren't High on Plans to Boost Palmdale" (Oct. 18): The hallways outside the corporate boardrooms of the airline business are strewn with the bodies of those who have not understood that change will come despite the Luddites who normally occupy the seats of that industry's power. As we try to plan for 2010 and beyond, set your mind back 20 to 30 years and ask yourself whether any of the elite intellectual group running the airlines at the time would believe Americans would fly coast to coast being served only bags of peanuts.

If the present group of dolts does not see that there are those who will figure out the needs of the consuming public and serve them, then they deserve what they get -- the same place in history that PanAm, AirCal and PSA now occupy, in our memories only.

Whether it is Palmdale or March or Norton or George or Point Mugu or El Toro or someplace else, 50 years from now, the many, many users of those airports will wonder what all the fuss was about. And they will visit the airport museum that LAX will have become and rekindle the memories of those people of that industry at the turn of the century who looked backward rather than forward.

BOB PINZLER

City Councilman

Redondo Beach

Downtown Blight Hurts Arena

In Howard Fine's article about the Staples Center ("First Step in Reinventing Downtown," Oct. 11) he writes: "But in order to convince people to walk through downtown streets, they first have to feel comfortable doing so. While crime may be down, the fear of crime is not."

Adding to people's fear of holdups and auto thefts will be their turned-off reaction as they're forced into looking at the ugliness of many of the sites between the Staples Center and the parking lots scattered throughout the area. This new arena in Los Angeles will be testing its potential to the breaking point, and unless its owners and neighborhood boosters get cracking, the popularity of the Staples Center, and L.A.'s downtown overall, will decline, not increase, over the long run.

CLAIRE FISHER

Huntington Beach