Trump sues to prevent runway expansion at PBIA

[DieselDragRacer]

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/trump-sues-to-prevent-runway-expansion-811278.html?cxntlid=thbz_hm

Donald Trump sued Palm Beach County on Monday, the latest step in his decades-long war against jet planes screaming over his home, Palm Beach's ritzy Mar-a-Lago club.

The suit, filed today in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, takes aim at Palm Beach International Airport's plan to add a second commercial runway. It asks that the expansion be blocked, that flights be prevented from flying over Mar-a-Lago, that Bruce Pelly, the airport's director, pay damages.

Trump will amend his suit to also seek damages from Palm Beach County after meeting a legal requirement that the county have six months' notice of a lawsuit seeking damages, said Trump attorney Jim Beasley, who provided the Palm Beach Post with a copy of the lawsuit Monday.

The lawsuit accuses the county of ignoring options that would reduce noise to make its expansion seem necessary.

The county had not yet received the filing Monday afternoon, said Jim Mize, chief assistant county attorney.

Pelly was philosophical. "Ah well," Pelly said. "He's sued me before."
That was in 1995, also against the county and Pelly, also stemming from flights over Mar-a-Lago, which sits directly in PBIA's main flight path. Trump says noise and exhaust from the planes have damaged the estate, a National Historic Landmark.

That time, a deal was brokered. The county agreed that noise over Mar-a-Largo would not worsen, and Trump agreed to drop the lawsuit and instead build a lavish golf course on 215 acres of rented county land, a lease the county had been balking on because of Trump's legal threat.
But in an interview Monday Trump said that the county hasn't held up its end of the bargain.

"They agreed to do things that they didn't do," Trump said, repeating the phrase three times for emphasis.

He called Pelly "incompetent" and harshly criticized the plan to add a runway, which he said was a waste of taxpayer money that Pelly wanted built because "I guess he needs something to do."

The expansion, usually called a $400 million project, was put on hold in January, after Pelly told federal officials that the recession had sapped the airport's traffic so much that, for now, the expansion was not necessary. "We knew he was going to try to stop the project, but there is no project," Pelly said Monday.

But Trump's suit alleges that the county is pushing forward with funding pieces of the plan that are only necessary if it intends to complete the expansion.

Trump said that "by the time they finish it," the project will cost $1 billion. "Somebody had to do something about it," he said.

He added: "I think I'm going to save the people of Florida and the people of Palm Beach County $1 billion, which is a nice contribution that I make."
The noise of planes taking off from the airport has long been controversial, particularly in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. It has been a Trump pet peeve since at least the '80s, when he and other Palm Beachers mounted a political campaign to finance candidates who promised to work the issue. At the time, he backed one idea not in his latest lawsuit: that the airport simply be moved elsewhere.

 

[kwick]

Just another "Idiot" that buys land in the flight path of the local airport and then
complains about the noise.

 

[jonjuan]

I'd love him to try and sue Warren Buffet and his little airline which is the largest user of pbi. I think he's just a little richer.

 

[Dizel8]

Wait, are we talking about the gent flying a decades old 727 complaining about noise?

 

[n757st]

Wait, are we talking about the gent flying a decades old 727 complaining about noise?

We sure are. And I am going to go on a limb and say a) he flys said 727 into PBI when he is down there and b) since FEDEX seems to fly the A310 in there, he indeed is operating the noisiest aircraft that the airport sees.

 

[AppBrookie]

Wait, are we talking about the gent flying a decades old 727 complaining about noise?

That was my question: Does he still fly his 72, no doubt one of the loudest a/c operating out PBI

 

[The Prussian]

...and the loudest hair do,...and the loudest mouth,...he reeks of noise..

 

[BrickTop]

I can assure you I and you as well, are far smarter than Donald Trump. Success is measure by longevity of business not buying and bankrupting as he has done in nearly every venture. Personally I'd like to punch him in the face and tell him he's a financial moron who did nothing other than brand his last name. I mean come on he still has to pay for sex. I make 40K a year and get laid every night.

 

[gutshotdraw]

Remind me to stay nice and low, slow, and LOUD on my next PBI takeoff.



Also don't forget, this is the same ass clown that registers his 727 offshore to avoid US taxes. And when he "ran" for President back in the day floated the idea of everyone with a net worth north of about $100k pay a "one time" tax of 10% of net worth to raise even more money for the government to blow...what a tool.

 

[SoFineSoFLA]

The man has no gratitude, the FAA named the first waypoint of the TBIRD1 departure after him, UFIRD, after all it's right over his house!

 

[Ky.BrownBourbn]

Hey Trump. It's called Imminent Domain, They want your house, They take your house... Maybe it's time for the IRS to show up and do some audits.

I hate it when people who "Think" they have money, run their mouths, if it wasn't for Mr. Trump's bankruptcies, he wouldn't have squat...Just another case of Rich People cheating the system!

Imagine if they decided to close PBI, He's be screaming because he'd have to drive 30 minutes to FLL.

KBB

 

[rtmcfi]

It might be called imminent domain, but it's spelled Eminent Domain.

 

[FLYLOW22]

Wait, are we talking about the gent flying a decades old 727 complaining about noise?

Yup. We're talking about the guy who flies a "hush kit" equipped 727 into PBI every Friday and leaves back for HPN or LGA every Sunday.

Hush kit on a 727... that's funny.

 

[FLYLOW22]

Personally I'd like to punch him in the face and tell him he's a financial moron who did nothing other than brand his last name.

His wig would defend him.

 

[jtf]

Is that point really over his place? I will be climbing and descending as loudly and low as legally possible on my many trips over that d-bags property and I want to be sure I'm pissing off the right snob when I'm doing so.

 

[timmay]

They should threaten to make PBI stage 3 only that would end his lawsuit rather quickly...unless that POS 72 is capable of stage 3?

 

[AKAAB]

Technically, it's classifed a re-engined Stage 3 aircraft.

Trump's complaint is not about the existing noise issues; it's about creating a new runway south of the existing main runway that would put flight paths directly over Mar-a-Lago - significantly altering the airport's noise footprint. In this case, he has a legitimate gripe.

You can complain about people that move into the noise footprint of an airport (me) and start complaining (I don't), but in this case the issue is much larger than just noise.

The runway expansion project was kept secret by the airport staff and was sprung on the local taxpayers with not so much as a courtesy memo to the Palm Beach County Committee on Airport Noise or local municipalities. The EIS (Environmental Impact Study) was started based on an FAA report that cited the need for additional concrete based on "economic factors" and not on an analysis of the actual traffic needs. (Burbank is the only other airport that the FAA used economic projections as their primary determinant instead of traffic projections based on real numbers.) The entire project is supposed to prevent taxi delays from increasing to 20 minutes in the next 10-20 years (I'll have to look up the actual timeframe.) Seriously, that's how they are justifying spending a half-billion dollars of the taxpayers' money.

The FAA/ATC has said that more concrete won't do anything for the bottleneck out of south Florida and won't significantly speed up departures, but nobody is listening. On top of that, the runways will be less than 800 feet apart - which requires traffic spacing to be the same as a single runway operation when there is weather. Want more? They want to shorten the 14/32 to 4000 feet - rendering it useless to most of us when the winds don't favor 10L/28R. Does anyone want to guess what happens when a tropical storm or hurricane moves through the area? The airport closes hours earlier and stays closed much longer after the storm passes because the crosswind runway is too short.

The entire project is ill-conceived, but is all part of the empire building that the Director of Airports has been known for.

 

[Dizel8]

Technically, it's classifed a re-engined Stage 3 aircraft.

Technically I flew some DC-8's that were classified as Stage 2 when that was the requirement and flew some that were Stage 3 when that became the requirement, but to tell you the truth, they sure made a lot of noise and couldn't really tell the difference when I heard them take off!

Heard Trump's 727 take off and that thing, although perhaps "technically" Stage 3 sure makes a louder racket than say the A-320!