Pro-airport forces furious over crash ad

Jasmine Lee

El Toro airport advocates on Tuesday charged anti-airport forces of using

lies and bad taste in a television commercial featuring black-and-white

footage from the wreckage of a 1965 military airplane crash.

The airport supporters have prepared a rebuttal advertisement with

retired Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William A. Bloomer denouncing the

anti-airport commercial and demanding that it be pulled from the air.

Bruce Nestande, president of the pro-airport Citizens for Jobs and the

Economy, screened the new ad Tuesday at a news conference.

“Opponents of a new El Toro airport are desecrating our military dead and

capitalizing on pain and human suffering just to make a political point,”

Bloomer states in the pro-airport commercial, which is expected to air

soon on Orange County cable television systems.

The El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a coalition of South County cities,

produced the anti-airport commercial and stands by its message, said

spokeswoman Meg Waters.

“They’re the ones not telling the truth,” Waters said. “[The military

pilots] did not fly passenger aircraft that way and that’s a matter of

record.”

There are no plans to stop running the anti-airport commercial, which has

undergone one revision since it first aired.

Waters said opposition was not a factor in changing the wording.

The commercial is part of a campaign to convince Orange County residents

that the proposed El Toro airport is a bad idea. The county has proposed

building a $2.9-billion airport at the closed military base.

Many local groups support the project, hoping a second county airport

will make it unnecessary to expand John Wayne Airport. South County

residents who oppose the project contend, however, that the airfield

would not be safe.

The anti-airport commercial shows soldiers dragging body bags away from

the wreckage of a military aircraft that took off from El Toro and

crashed into Loma Ridge -- killing all 84 passengers aboard. The

voice-over states the Marines refused to use that runway for passenger

flights after the crash 35 years ago.

“If it’s too dangerous for the Marines, isn’t it too dangerous for you?”

the commercial asks.

The chairman of the Orange County Business Council, Tom Merrick,

announced Tuesday that the council was also demanding the anti-airport ad

be pulled from local cable channels. Attorneys for pro-airport efforts

have sent letters to cable companies, asking that the advertisement be

pulled.

Citizens for Jobs and the Economy and the Newport Beach-based Airport

Working Group, two organizations lobbying for the proposed El Toro

airport, are outraged at the commercial, calling it “inaccurate” and

“offensive.”

Bruce Nestande, president of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, said his

opponents’ commercial will work against them.

“I think they were foolish to run it for many reasons,” he said. “It’s

always risky to use human tragedy for political purposes ... And they

knowingly ran an inaccuracy.”

Nestande added that once the ad with Gen. Bloomer airs, residents can

decide who to believe themselves.

Bloomer, who was the base commander at El Toro from 1984-86 and a Irvine

city councilman from 1990-93, said during a conference call Tuesday from

Virginia that the Marine Corps continued to use that runway after the

crash and that he had been a passenger on one of those flights.

The advertising campaigns for both sides have become increasingly visible

as the primary election approaches. A measure on the March 7 ballot is a

key factor in the airport dispute.

Measure F, designed to block the El Toro airport, if passed, would

require a two-thirds majority of registered voters to approve some county

projects, such as airports, jails and hazardous waste landfills.

Waters said she suspects El Toro advocates are attempting to deflect

certain safety issues from public focus in the last couple weeks before

the election with tactics such as the new commercial.

She cited letters sent by two pilots groups criticizing the proposed

airport to the county’s El Toro Master Development Program office --

which is handling the airport project. The pilots groups have said that

the runway in question is dangerous.

“Loma Ridge is an impediment for northbound departures,” stated a letter

from John Russell, a representative of the Air Line Pilots Association,

International. “Flying over the ridge instead of around it defies common

sense.”