Torrance Municipal Airport

Overview

Size:

There are 500 acres of airport property. 140 acres are leased at commercial rates for non-aeronautical purposes. A total of 360 acres are aeronautical. About 140 acres of the aeronautical land is open and partially used for agriculture.

Runways:

29R-11L 4,450' by 150' asphalt paving
29L-11R 3,000' by 75' asphalt paving

These two runways are capable of handling a maximum aircraft weight of 20,000 Lbs. The combinaton of length and weight capacity makes the runways near ideal for general aviation, but are not recommended for air carrier type aircraft.

The airport is 101' above sea level, and is served by an FAA Control Tower. Modem navigational safety aids are in use to assure safe takeoff and landing operations.

Operations:

Each takeoff and landing is considered an operation. Local operations are those which originate and terminate at Torrance. Transient operations are landings which were not preceded by a takeoff from our airport.

In 1980 there were 185,849 local operations and 170,143 transient operations (355,992 total operations). By the end of the decade local operations had fallen to 112,774 (-39 %), and transients to 130,550 (-23%), a total of 43,324 operations. The decline in operations from the 428.000 recorded in 1974 is even more dramatic.

Noise:

Noise has also declined over the years. Since the inception of the City's Noise Abatement Program, less than one half of one percent of all operations result in a noise violation. Types of aircraft that can not meet the stingent noise controls are banned from the airport.

Hangars:

There are 355 hangars on the airport. The City owns 148 hangars, and will assume ownership of all private hangars at the expiration of existing ground leases. Great effort is taken to assure that all hangars comply with all City Rules and Regulations.

Tie Downs:

There are a total of 470 tiedowns, of which 275 are permanent-City tiedowns. Only 195 tiedowns are, or will be, assigned to Fixed Base Operators (FBOs). A small number of tiedowns are currently unleased for administrative reasons.

Aircraft:

The City limits based aircraft to 825 airplanes. Based aircraft does not include transient aircraft which visit the field for a brief time, and which may be parked/tied down at an FBO site. Some types of aircraft are banned from the airport because they are felt to be "too noisy" and incapable of meeting the City's stringent noise ordinance.

Haas Report:

On March 31, 1989 this consultant published a report in which the following recommendations were made:

• There should be one full service FBO for each 150 based aircraft. Given 825 based aircraft, Haas Report believed the airport should have 5 to 8 FBOS.
• There should be a minimum of 5 acres for each FBO parcel.

The Goals of the Torrance Municipal Airport Are:

• Safe operations to, from, and around the Airport.
  (No crashes, and the lowest liability risk possible)
• Harmony among the diverse stakeholders in the Airport.
  (Lowest conflict possible between pilots and community, regulatory and council satisfaction that the operation meets their goals)
• Efficient administration
  (Lowest operational costs coupled with the greatest productivity. The best return on resource allocation must be rendered).