Roar with a Latin Beat

Residents around Miami International Airport who are recovering from hangovers next New Year's Day may be spared further distress from low-flying jets. That is when Federal Aviation Regulation 91, which bans many noisy planes from U.S. air ports, is scheduled to go into effect. But for the 30 Caribbean, Central and Latin American as well as eight domestic airlines that fly to and from Miami with predominantly aging and noisy Boeing 707s, DC-8s and BAC-111s, the headaches will have just begun.

The Federal Aviation Administration in 1976 set a noise-rule deadline for U.S. airlines, and four years later extended it to foreign carriers. The Central and Latin American airlines estimate that installing noise-abatement equipment in their fleets would cost $1 billion and bankrupt many of them. Moreover, Richard H. Judy, director of the Dade County aviation department, predicts that more than 6,000 aviation jobs in Florida and an additional 1,000 south of the border will be lost unless the FAA extends the deadline to Jan. 1, 1988. So far, the FAA seems unwilling to do so.