The City Council this week approved an ordinance that will pave the way for Torrance to implement landing fees at its municipal airport starting in January.
Any individual pilots or organizations — excluding military, public safety and medical operations — will face a minimum fee of $6 for each landing at Zamperini Field.
The ordinance, which is the latest effort to ultimately reduce noise at the airport, also included a noteworthy exemption. Robinson Helicopter Company, a prominent manufacturer of civilian helicopters that’s been in Torrance since 1973, was spared from paying the landing fees — though its CEO also opposes the fees in general.
The new regulations exempt operators that own and use their helipads for landings, meaning they don’t have to use public runways. Currently, though, Robinson Helicopter Company is the only one that maintains a private helipad through its lease with the city, according to a staff report.
There were 185,806 flights that went through Zamperini Field in 2022, according to city data. Out of those, 61,938 were transient flights. There were 73,322 billable fixed-wing aircraft operations and 18,581 helicopter operations.
A majority of the rotary flight operations, or 16,723, were attributed to Robinson Helicopter Company, the data shows.
Airport noise has been a long-standing issue in Torrance, exacerbated in recent years by the expansion of Sling Pilot Academy. The school has accounted for a majority of the high-volume flight training traffic in the area, according to residents who live near the airport.
While supporters applauded the decision as a fundamental step to tamp down noise, opponents said it would not achieve what the city has set out to do — which is to discourage the excessive use of the municipal airport by non-Torrance airplanes and local flight schools.
Instead, the landing fees unfairly impact all flights in and out of Zamperini Field and businesses surrounding the airport, opponents said.
“I’ve been a hangar tenant for quite a long time,” said Anne Minder, chair of the Torrance Airport Commission. “This year, I will contribute $77,600 in fees from my hangar rental and I’m just one of 345 other hangars, most of which cost more than my hangar.”
The landing fees will not serve its intended purpose, since Sling Pilot Academy would probably add that into the costs of their flight lessons, she said.
“Me, I get hurt by it,” Minder said. “All of us who are base pilots who have been there, these reasonable people, for a really long time” get hurt by it.
Kurt Robinson, president and CEO of Robinson Helicopter Company, expressed appreciation for the council’s consideration of an ordinance that excluded his company from the fees. But he also said he opposes landing fees at the airport.
“We totally appreciate the city’s desire to respond to the community and reduce noise,” he said. “It’s a difficult problem. We’ve worked on it for years and done everything we possibly can.
“However, the city also does have an obligation to properly manage the airport, which is a very valuable asset,” Robinson added. “It provides jobs, emergency services and other major economic benefits, which we all know and appreciate.”
City officials, on the other hand, said the ordinance the council OK’d on Tuesday, Nov. 28, is the most equitable solution they’ve come up with, one that would allow heavy users to pay for their share of the airport’s usage.
City staffers presented the council with three possible ordinances. Two of thoses included the exemption to Robinson Helicopter Company.
The first one — which the panel initially approved in July, though it needed a public hearing to go into effect — would have charged non-Torrance flights and local flight schools with fleets of at least three aircrafts a landing fee of $3 per 1,000 pounds of aircraft, with a minimum charge of $6 per landing.
Besides military, public safety and medical aircraft, it also would have exempted Torrance-based rotary wing aircraft manufacturers, specifically Robinson Helicopter Company, from being charged.
But after consulting with the city attorney, staffers came up with a second ordinance. That option would have applied landing fees to all transient flights and those from local area flight schools, including Robinson Helicopter Company, regardless of the number of aircrafts in their fleets.
The third version — which the council approved on Tuesday — was not included in the staff report when the item first came up for discussion on Nov. 14.
Councilmember Mike Griffiths, who first proposed the landing fees during the July council meeting, was the one who asked staffers to present the third option for the panel’s consideration.
His original motion was to exempt Robinson, small flight schools and Torrance-based pilots who rent hangars from the city, Griffiths said.
“Unfortunately, because of the legal advice that we received,” he said, “it was determined that by putting in those types of exclusions, we were creating a discriminatory motion that would not hold up in court, and that’s why we had to back pedal.”
The panel itself was split when it came to the final vote.
The ordinance passed with four approving. Mayor George Chen voted no and Councilmember Bridgett Lewis abstained. Councilmember Sharon Kalani continued recusing herself because of what she previously said was “a wrongful claim of a potential conflict of interest,” though she has not elaborated on that possible conflict.
Chen didn’t explain his vote during the meeting but Lewis said she was not comfortable moving forward with the motion because it didn’t exclude the area-based pilots who have hangar leases and tie-downs.
City Attorney Patrick Sullivan, though, said the way to make the ordinance legally defensible was to apply it to all operators.
“The argument is that they are using the runways, just as anyone else,” he said. “Their hangar rental fees are going towards the hangars and things like that. It’s not necessarily paying for the runways or the helipads.”
