Late this afternoon, the City of San Jose denied a request by billionaire Larry Ellison to exempt his private jet from the city's airport curfew, setting the stage for a federal court challenge.
Ellison, the chief executive officer of Oracle, has a pending lawsuit challenging the city's curfew in U.S. District Court. Judge Jeremy Fogel put the suit on hold in January and ordered the city to decide by March 31 whether or not to grant Ellison an exemption to the curfew.
The airport's curfew prohibits any airplane weighing over 75,000 pounds from landing between 11:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
Ellison filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Jose in January 2000 because he believes the curfew should not apply to his $38 million Gulfstream V, which is quieter than several older aircraft models using the airport that are under the weight limit. Fully fueled, the Gulfstream V weighs approximately 90,500 pounds.
City officials fear that if Ellision is granted an exemption it may cause the Federal Aviation Administration to toss the entire curfew out as being too arbitrary.
Any change in the curfew's status would delay or even kill the airport's planned $1.5 billion expansion project because the project's environmental impact report is based on a curfew that curtails large numbers of late-night flights into the airport.
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