Aircraft engineer says tobacco-smoke residue,
 contaminants were problem
     MIAMI (August 4, 1997 4:21 p.m. EDT) -- Tobacco-smoke contamina-
 tion in airliners was so troublesome that aircraft engineers gave up
 trying to eliminate it and ultimately recommended inflight smoking
 be banned, an engineer testified Monday.
     Paul Halfpenny, a 33-year Lockheed engineer who specialized in
 ventilation and headed a government panel that recommended a smoking
 ban on airline flights, said even pumping in more fresh air wouldn't
 fix the problem.
     "No matter how you ventilate an airplane, smoke concentration
 is always a problem," said Halfpenny, a senior engineer who helped
 design Lockheed's L-1011 jumbo jet. "We did our best, but I don't
 believe we solved the problem."
     He told a Miami jury hearing a landmark $5 billion class-action
 lawsuit by flight attendants who blame their illnesses on smoke
 aboard airliners that Lockheed often received complaints from air-
 lines about aircraft ventilation.
     He said aircraft crews and passengers criticized the amount of
 cabin smoke and the "irritation from tobacco smoke."  Most of the
 complaints came from flight attendants, he said.
     While explaining how the ventilation system works on most jet-
 liners, he said contaminants would be at their highest concentration
 in the middle of the airplane -- where flight attendants do most of
 their work.
     Halfpenny headed the Committee on Airliner Cabin Air Quality
 that studied the problem for Congress and recommended to the Federal
 Aviation Administration in 1986 that smoking be banned on commercial
 flights in the United States.
     Smoking was banned on short flights in 1988 and on all U.S.
 domestic flights in 1990.
     Engineers in his group did field research on the effects of
 smoking on airplanes, Halfpenny testified. They determined that
 about 61 percent of passengers smoked, after collecting cigarette
 butts from planes and comparing that with surveys taken from
 passengers.
     Halfpenny said that when inspecting planes, he found sticky
 residue that he attributed to smoking.
     "When we pulled the side panels out we'd see the build-up of
 yellow tar," he said, adding it was visible in the air ducts and
 outflow valves of the ventilation system.
     "When we removed these grills you'd find the sticky tar," he
 said. "There was a lot of lint attached to it. It becomes a glue."
     The tar all but disappeared on airplanes after a ban on in-
 flight smoking, he said. The only exception were planes flown by
 foreign airlines in countries that did not have a smoking ban.
     On cross-examination by tobacco attorneys in the Florida circuit
 court lawsuit at the Dade County Courthouse, Halfpenny agreed that
 airlines and manufacturers could have done more "theoretically," but
 many of the developments were not pursued because of the steep cost,
 he said.
     He read from a Boeing survey that looked at a high-tech filtra-
 tion system, but determined it was too expensive. It estimated the
 cost of operating the 747s in service would go up by $1.3 billion a
 year.
     "The airlines decided it wasn't worth it to do it," he said.
     Airlines also cut corners during the energy crisis in the 1970s
 to try and save money, he said.
 -------------------------------
          Tycoon battles town to land his chopper at home
     BEDFORD, N.Y. (August 4, 1997 3:04 p.m. EDT) -- This town is so
 wealthy it actually has a law that says you can't land your helicop-
 ter in your yard. It also has a really rich guy with a big Sikorsky
 who says the law doesn't apply to him.
     Nelson Peltz, 55, chairman of Triarc Cos., bought a 106-acre
 estate known as High Winds in 1986 and put in a helipad. Soon he was
 commuting to his New York City office, 40 miles away, in a blue-and-
 white six-passenger chopper...........
     Marshall, who is 87 and may be best known as the crusading
 attorney in TV's "The Defenders," has been a leader of the fight
 against the chopper, complaining: "These people with money think
 they are entitled to anything they can buy, without respect for
 the law or their neighbors."........
     Those neighbors include plenty of monied celebrities. Glenn
 Close, Michael Crichton, Carl Icahn, Chevy Chase and Ralph Lauren
 all live in Bedford, though none has taken any public part in the
 whirlybird war.
     Marshall, a resident since the 1960s, pointed out that the town
 has a 1983 zoning ordinance banning aircraft takeoffs and landings
 in residential areas.
 .......Peltz, who is worth $620 million and who runs such businesses
 as Arby's and Snapple. He claimed that High Winds was exempt from
 the law because when DeWitt Wallace, founder of Reader's Digest,
 owned the place, he sometimes landed his private plane on the
 grounds. That meant, Peltz claimed, that his right to fly in and
 out was grandfathered in as a "pre-existing non-conforming use."
 .......Peltz added a variety of defenses, claiming that helicopter
 use can be regulated only by the Federal Aviation Administration;
 that the noise does not affect residents any more than other air
 traffic over Bedford; that the town is taking his property without
 just compensation; and that landing a helicopter is not land use but
 a means of transportation and therefore not subject to zoning.
     The case probably won't go to trial before next year. A judge
 has given lawyers until December to exchange information.
 ---------------------------------------------------------
 Quite a bit deleted.  Jim
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