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For decades, the Valley's boosters took pride in the stat that Van Nuys Airport was the busiest in the country, due mostly to all the private pilots and students who flew there. Now traffic at VNY has fallen by half, to levels not seen since 1963, reporter Dana Bartholomew says in the Daily News. Rising rents drove away most of the prop planes based at Van Nuys, flight schools followed, and now there are vacancies all over the field, the story says. What business remains is mostly about business jets. Neighbors may be happy about the decline in propeller noise, but people whose livelihood is tied to the airport are pointing fingers at management by the city's Department of Airports. Meanwhile, plans for a "propeller park" devoted to small planes on the site of a former Air National Guard base facing Balboa Boulevard on the west side of the airport have been delayed.
VNY trivia: Van Nuys opened in 1928 as privately-owned Metropolitan Airport, with intersecting grass runways on a former bean field. If neighbors hate the airplane noise now, imagine if the promoters' pitch to become the city's main airport had been accepted back then. LAX might be in the middle of the Valley.
Trivia II: I learned to fly at VNY and got my FAA license there, though my first solo was at Burbank. That license has been expired for...a long time.
LAO photo: Weeds grow on former Air National Guard base at Van Nuys Airport.