A pilot group in Torrance has initiated legal action against the city to challenge the validity of the recently-imposed landing fees at the city’s municipal airport.
The Torrance Airport Association (TAA), which represents around 150 pilots in Torrance and neighboring communities that use the airport, lodged the lawsuit with the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, March 8. The group alleged that the landing fee is “patently unfair” and breaches both state and federal laws.
Peter Broen, president of the TAA, said Monday that this legal action is the pilots’ last resort after attempting to work with city staff for the past few years to find solutions for mitigating noise impact on the community, without success.
“City staff is just not interested in any cooperative solutions and is totally focused on just punitive actions against the pilots and beating up on pilots in thinking that that will make the neighbors happy,” Broen said.
Torrance officials declined to provide comment for this story.
However, Chuck Costello, a leader of the Coalition for Torrance Airport Reform, a residents group that has been urging the city to enact aircraft noise reduction measures, noted the existence of precedent in similar cases involving landing fees.
“Landing fees are charged at Santa Monica Airport and pilots filed a lawsuit against them and lost,” he said. “So there is a precedent established in court, in L.A. County or state superior court, for the authority of a city owning an airport to establish landing fees at that airport. So, I think that if the court follows precedent that they’re likely to uphold the city’s position.”
The TAA filed a Petition for Writ of Administrative Mandamus and Traditional Mandate, requesting the court to vacate the city’s landing fee ordinance and refund all previously collected landing fees. Furthermore, the group sought compensation for legal fees and lawsuit expenses.
The petition included three major arguments.
First, lawyers for the TAA alleged that the landing fee ordinance is in conflict with federal law, as the Federal Aviation Administration holds exclusive sovereignty over the US airspace, preempting the city’s attempt to regulate flights through landing fees.
Second, the adoption of the landing fee ordinance “was arbitrary and capricious”, the lawyers argued. Despite a claim that landing fees were necessary to cover airport maintenance costs, no supporting evidence was presented, they said.
Finally, the lawyers alleged that the landing fee ordinance constitutes an invalid special tax, as it has not been approved by voters and fails to demonstrate substantial evidence that the fees cover the reasonable cost of the services provided. This renders the ordinance an unreasonable and unconstitutional special tax, subject to the two-thirds vote requirement according to the California Constitution, they said.
The landing fee program, effective as of Feb. 1, imposes a minimum charge of $6 for each airplane landing at the Torrance municipal airport, also know as Zamperini Field, with exceptions for military, public safety, and medical operations.
The program also includes a provision exempting Robinson Helicopter Company, a prominent manufacturer of civilian helicopters that’s been in Torrance since 1973. This exemption applies to operators that own and use their helipads for landings, meaning they don’t have to use public runways.
Currently, Robinson Helicopter Company is the only one that maintains a private helipad through its lease with the city, according to a staff report.