Mr. MOORE. Well, I think-I am going from memory now. I may be in error a little bit, Senator, but I think we are at 15 percent of operations within the FAR 36 level aircraft at this time.

Senator CANNON. Now, let me ask you, how fast do you see improvement in the situation, based on what you see at the present time? For example, in 1975, 2 years in advance, do you know what that 15 percent would then become?

Mr. MOORE. I wish we had more accurate data on that from the carriers, but my guess is that it still would be substantially less than 50 percent of the operations.

Senator CANNON. So, we are talking well off into the future, perhaps 1976 or 1977 or 1978, really, before the bulk of the aircraft meet the FAR 36 requirements?

Mr. MOORE. That is precisely why we pick the date of December 31, 1979, for setting that as the ultimate standards date for Los Angeles Airport. We admittedly need perhaps a lot more information than we had, but we did the best we could.

We feel that removing aircraft from the fleet and looking at retrofitting some of them, and accomplishing all of this without having too many aircraft down and out of service at one time, which would also cripple everything, that the earliest possible date you could make this program effective would be 1979. So, your comments bring you very close that that date and I think a year or so either side of that is a reasonable assumption.

Senator CANNON. Is it correct to say that, even if we went to a retrofit program on the JT-3 engine as well as the JT-8, for example, that the retrofit program on the older aircraft could not, then, be accomplished until the time frame of 1977 or 1978?

Mr. MOORE. Completely; yes. That would be my understanding. Senator CANNON. So that when speaking in terms of meeting FAR 36 requirements which will reduce the noise level to liveable standards, we are not provided with any immediate relief from a very serious problem that these people have to live with at the present time.

Mr. MOORE. No.

I truthfully, outside of what we can do with operations in terms of over the water, two segment approaches and so forth, I do not see any immediate relief.

Senator CANNON. All right.

That was going to be my next question. If that is the fact, if we cannot look to relief as a result of the retrofit program, even if the Government fully funds the retrofit program, we could not have it before the 1978 time frame. How can we reduce the levels of noise somewhat at least to provide some relief for these people in the interim?

You have just talked about your night program but what needs to be done for a daytime program?

Mr. MOORE. Well, of course, I think what it means is a very highly complex technical analysis of the whole flight control procedure here, and I am not really expert enough to talk about that, other than to say that up until now the Federal Aviation officials have not seen fit to indicate that there is a way that they can do it with safety and without great restriction on the system.

There may well be and they will speak to that point, I am sure, there may well be ways with additional equipment or refinement of flight operating techniques and control techniques that they might be able to accomplish that at Los Angeles, but I must say that I am not familiar enough with those to comment on them.

Senator CANNON. Now, are you familiar enough with these techniques to address yourself to the two segment approach and what can be done there?

Mr. MOORE. Yes. We have worked with the airlines on that to some substantial degree, particularly PSA, when they first started it under visual flight rule conditions.

There are measurable benefits to be gained from it. I will not dwell on them, but they bring the noise level quite a ways in toward the airport boundaries.

United is now going to be flying instrumented work here at Los Angeles Airport and in fact they may have already started in the last few days. I am not sure of the time, using incockpit instrumentation and, of course, the FAA has this and NASA has these programs going.

I would say that every influence ought to be brought to bear to make those more helpful because they promise more immediately. There are other things that we have asked the airlines and the FAA to consider, such as, no thrust reversal at night, where the runway length is longer and the plane can land with safety.

Senator CANNON. Have you had a reasonable response to that request?

Mr. MOORE. We are in that process right now. We have not had the response as yet. In fact, we are meeting with the Administrator here on that subject on the 10th of April.

Senator CANNON. What other things have you done?

Mr. MOORE. The use of flap management techniques, whether you use two segment or not, the way you manage the flaps on approach can result in traffic noise reduction.

Those should be further explored. American Airlines and others have worked on those.

Senator CANNON. What about the takeoff procedures as well?

Mr. MOORE. Well, the takeoff procedures are not as great a concern to Los Angeles because of the ocean and we have not worked on those to the degree we have with the approach procedures, but there are takeoff procedures that the airlines have developed with rapid climbout procedures which cause more noise in an immediate area, but bring the airplane up much more sharply and reduce the total impact contour tremendously and we think there would be at least a national standard for that, and I think we are working toward that, in that direction.

Senator CANNON. Senator Tunney?

Senator TUNNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would first like to thank Mr. Moore for having secured the endorsement of the counsel for the airport operators on behalf of the noise bill last year, I think this endorsement was the stimulus in creating a general ground swell of support for the noise bill. I submit if it had not been for you, I don't think we would have been able to get that bill through the Congress.

So, I very much appreciate the work that you did.

Although I am interested in all aspects of your statement, the subject of preemption is of particular interest to me.

As I read the main part of your statement, I recalled one of the points made in the report of the prestigious Aviation Advisory Commission which was presented to the President and the Congress on January 1, 1973.

In a chapter devoted to noise, the Commission begins,

By all accounts noise is the most explosive problem facing aviation today. Even a partial reconning of the results of public opposition takes on a semblance of disaster. Capacity has had to be cut back. Noise has made it almost impossible to expand major existing airports let alone build new ones

As I read your statement, your suggested cure for the problem seems to be Federal preemption. I can see, however, that this solution would relieve airport authorities of a possible liability for airport noise when in fact it has never been clear what tools they needed to employ to solve the problems.

But, will the preemption, per se, insure that someone else, say a combination of EPA and the FAA, will do enough to solve the problem?

Mr. MOORE. Well, Senator, I wish I had the answer for that question. Let me say that I sense, from my participation, in proceedings with both the FAA and the DOT and as well as the EPA that the people in Washington are floundering around in a welter of various proposals, claims, positions, and I must go back to my point that if we do not eventually force a decision for a criteria and a standard for measuring the impact, you are going to leave it to every judge and jury in the United States to pick their own, unless, perhaps, a State standard prevails in the court ultimately.

There are many attorneys that think that will happen and there are many that think it will not and we will have to wait and see. But, my feeling is that I am not so much after someone else to pick up the tab, or someone else to solve the problem, I am really after definition.

What I want is for someone to define the problem so that we are all talking about the same ball game.

Senator TUNNEY. Yes.

Mr. MOORE. We are not even at that point. We are not even all talking about the same ball game and until we get to that point, I think we have some problems.

If we could get at least that much leadership to set the criteria and set the standards by which the criteria will be judged, I think that will go a long way into working out some of these other solutions.

With regard to the cost, there are several people, members of Congress, Senators, and Congressmen who have said to me personally, "You know, I just cannot see Congress taking the financial liability for the problem."

Well, I don't really think that Congress is going to wind up with the financial liability of this problem.

The people that are going to wind up with it are the users, no matter what route you choose, because most municipal budgets or

State budgets, today are so pressed for funds that they are not going to be able to contribute to the problem solving in any event.

I know that it is true in the city of Los Angeles and the county of Los Angeles and most likely in the State of California.

We are not going to get financial help from these institutions so we are going to have to get it from our own revenue and our own sources. So, it really becomes academic whether or not we levy it locally or whether you do it on a comprehensive basis from the user nationally.

In the final analysis, it is a user oriented system. In the interest of this country, it seems to me, over the long haul, we are better off that it is user oriented and user supported and well defined and disciplined rather than subsidized out of a lot of general tax funds from many sources.

Senator TUNNEY. OK.

Let me ask you this: In as much as there is a great deal of floundering around, in your words, at the Federal level and in as much as you have come up with a hard hitting five-point program, don't you think that State and local action can be a useful prod in getting Federal agencies to tow the line and do their job?

Mr. MOORE. Well, Senator, I think that that is quite apparent from the 50-point in our program.

We are going to do everything we can to stimulate our city council and our county government and our State government to plead with you to do this at the Federal level.

I must submit that I am not precisely clear as to who should take the leadership, whether it is the Congress or the administration. The FAA Administrator already has many times the power he needs to operate, if he would elect to use it, but then I listen to other people who tell me that that is not true, that they need more leadership from the Congress.

I am not sure.

Senator TUNNEY. Well, the FAA will have an opportunity to testify at these hearings and perhaps we could ask them that question. Mr. MOORE. Yes.

Senator TUNNEY. Turning to that five-point plan of yours, I was impressed by the fact that you have been able to get support from the airlines as well as the environmentalists. Quoting from a recent speech given by United Airlines' president, Edward Carlson in Los Angeles on March 2 of this year, he

says:

The Los Angeles Airport has adopted the strictest noise rules ever proposed by a major U.S. airport.

If I may paraphrase Shakespeare, I have come to praise Moore, not to argue with him. Mr. Moore throughout his planning has been cognizant not only of the needs of the citizens of Los Angeles and the surrounding communities, but the enormous influence that the Los Angeles Area has on the national economy and the need to control noise without adversely affecting the local and national interest.

I would agree with Carlson's appraisal of you and what you have done. It seems to me that your plan achieves what I described in my opening remarks as being important to protect the health and wel

fare.

If we are to have Federal preemption, what would become of your five-point plan?

Mr. MOORE. Well, the Commission, in adopting the program, said use these as our regulations pending Federal action and at the time of Federal action we would review it and more likely we would substitute the Federal standards for our own standards.

I guess the only dilemma we would have is if the Federal standards were markedly weaker, then the Board would have a dilemma. Senator TUNNEY. What would happen then?

Mr. MOORE. I cannot predict what the commission would do. I do not want to speak for them. My own impression would be that these are reasonable standards and these are realistic standards and that is what is going to happen in this country and we would stand by

them.

But, whether the commission would adopt that and endorse my recommendations, I am not sure.

Senator TUNNEY. Of course, if there was preemption—

Mr. MOORE. If there was complete and total preemption and that was clear, we, of course

Senator TUNNEY. That is right.

Mr. MOORE. One of the issues, Senator, if I may interrupt, that I have been clarifing here is what is the role of a proprietor. In taking this stand this was clearly in my mind and I publicly stated so that if the proprietor does not have this power, then he ought to know that he does not have this power and one of the things that we are attempting to get out of this is the clarification of the role of a provider.

Perhaps, we will get that out of the review of the Burbank case by the Supreme Court. We are not sure. We are hopeful we will have some clarification.

Senator TUNNEY. One of the things that concerns me very deeply, and I know it concerns you also, is the possibility that LAX could be closed down if there were a major judgment against it on a nui

sance suit.

One of the reasons that I fought as hard last year for the noise bill as I did was because I felt that we had to have a stimulus to protect the health and welfare around the airport. Otherwise we were going to get these nuisance suits which in all probability, if they were substantial, would close down the airport and would be detrimental to the community's commerce and health and welfare in general.

I would just like to know what your thoughts are with regard to the point that I am making. If you have a substantial damage suit and a recovery on that damage suit, what would happen to the international airport?

Mr. MOORE. Believe me, I have been discussing this problem at great length with the various executives of the airlines for quite a few months because the entire continued existence of the airport hinges upon the very fragile relationship of the user of the airline and the supplier.

Up until now we have been very successful in maintaining an adequate financial posture. There is no question under the terms of the agreement that we have at the present the sole source of these increased funds with minor exceptions would be the airline landing fee structure.