Mr. Scott reviewed the history and purpose of the SoCal Task Force. Mr. Bill Withycombe, Regional Administrator, Western-Pacific Region, also welcomed the Task Force members and guests. The purpose of this meeting was to review the status of current projects and recommendations, which were developed by the Core members to address the identified concerns. Many of these recommendations require additional study or testing before they can be validated and, if appropriate, implemented.
More information is needed to clarify and define the actual problem.
Ms. Dee Hardison, the Mayor of Torrance, will work with Mr. Withycombe to facilitate a meeting with the concerned parties. Part of the issue appears to be concerns that helicopter operators are not following the agreed upon routes for noise abatement. The majority of the problems occur when aircraft do not follow the standard departure procedures. During that time, controllers developed the habit of vectoring aircraft and accommodating pilot requests for direct routes. Although the navaid is back in service, there are still times when the aircraft are not on the standard route, sometimes because of controller and pilot habits, but also it may occur for other reasons including traffic conflict resolution and navigational errors.