THE PLAN for National Airport, now pending before Secretary of Transportation Neil Goldschmidt and FAA Administrator Langhorne Bond, is a .disaster. It would enshrine Dulles as the world?Ûªs greatest secondary airfield and it would destroy the last trace of any hope that someday people will be able to live and work and walk along the Potomac River in comfort.</br></br>Dulles was built, as those who have been around this city for 20 years will remember, to become Washington?Ûªs major ?ÛÏjetport.?Û? The decision to pour $120 million?ÛÓin 1960 dollars?ÛÓinto it was predicated on the belief that National Airport was too crowded, too noisy and too dangerous. Now, with National handling almost four times as many passengers as it did then, generating more noise and presenting equally serious safety problems, the planners are urging that it-become ever larger and that it remain this city?Ûªs major airport indefinitely.</br></br>The answer is that almost everyone has fallen into the .habit of believing that National is and must always be this community?Ûªs major airport. We fell into th^e trap ourselves a few weeks ago when we described the plan for National?Ûªs future as not too bad ?ÛÏas long as?Û? that airport is to be No. 1.</br></br>'But?ÛÓas the National Capital Planning Commission asked yesterday?ÛÓshould National continue to be Washington?Ûªs major airport? It is handling hundreds of planes?ÛÓjets?ÛÓeach day for which it is too small. It isTcbping with a passenger load that would destroy most other airports. And it is a terrible neighbor to tens of thousands of people who live and work and play under its flight paths. No community that had control over its own destiny would have tolerated National during all these years when Dulles has stood in isolated splendor. National would have?ÛÓshould have ?ÛÓgone the way of the in-town airports in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City long ago.</br></br>National has remained inviolate, however, because of the belief that air travelers, especially if they are members of Congress, have an inalienable right to fly into the middle of Washington. That?Ûªs why the first opportunity to make Dulles the major airport?ÛÓthe proposal to bar jets from National?ÛÓwas ignored for 15 years. That?Ûªs why the second opportunity?ÛÓputting a-500-mile limit on flights in and out of National?ÛÓ was repudiated after the FAA seized it briefly. And that?Ûªs why the current and probably last opportunity ?ÛÓthe introduction of wide-bodied, small jets?ÛÓis about to disappear. All the thinking of FAA?Ûªs planners concerns what to do with the passengers who will be ?ÛÏturned away?Û? from National if limits are placed on its growth.