THE CONSUMMATE TRAVELER : City Airports Manager Kept Office Flying Through 20 Turbulent Years

Given his love of flying, his friends say, Clifton Moore must have been a bird in some previous life--and a strong one at that.

Ask Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who in July went on an eight-day, eight-city whirlwind trip through Europe with Moore, the 66-year-old general manager of the city’s Department of Airports.

First, the two flew to Geneva. Then on to Zurich, Frankfurt, Paris, Lyon, Cologne, London and, finally, Birmingham. The purpose was to learn about rail systems that serve airports.

By the time they boarded their flight home, Moore, 14 years her senior, had worn her out, Flores said.

“Clif included everything within reason we could do,” said the councilwoman. “He is the consummate traveler.”

Two Decades at Helm

Come October, Moore, who guesses that he has logged “several million miles” in the air (his secretary counts 41 trips alone in the 31 months ending in July), will have served as head of the department for two decades.

As overseer of the city-run airports in Los Angeles, Ontario, Van Nuys and Palmdale, Moore has earned a reputation as a globe-trotter. Even airport commissioner Johnnie Cochran Jr., who believes Moore’s far-flung travels pay off handsomely in promotion, said Moore “should probably stay home more.”

But Moore, a self-educated man forced to forgo college to help support his family during the Depression, is largely viewed as the Good Civil Servant and a smart politician who has managed the department through 20 years of growth and controversy while keeping both eyes on the future.

Take the Palmdale airport. Though it is remains a home for jack rabbits rather than jumbo jets, Moore is credited with having the foresight as far back as the mid-60s to predict the eventual need for another airport. He pushed the department to purchase 7,750 acres there, and many city officials, including Flores, are convinced it will indeed be developed someday as the region’s other airports become clogged.

“From my standpoint, he has always been 30 years ahead,” said James Seeley, the city’s chief lobbyist in Washington.

“He looks like he’s a poor old country boy,” said Jim Murphy, a vice president of the Air Transport Assn., an airline group. “But he is a deep and complicated type of person.

“He is not so worried about nailing down every carpet tack in the Bradley Terminal that he forgets there is a future.”

Looking Ahead

As he enters his third decade leading the department, Moore says the problems ahead will be different from past challenges, such as the issues of jet noise, the condemnation of homes near Los Angeles International Airport, and roadway double-decking at LAX.

Now the major issue is how many more planes LAX should be allowed to accommodate, given the region’s worsening air capacity crunch and mounting auto traffic and other environmental problems around the airport.

“Twenty years ago we were dreaming dreams of things that were going to happen and when they were going to happen,” Moore said. “And to a large extent they have happened. If anything, we have underestimated the impact of population growth and the impact of aviation on our area.”

In coming years, he says, a new regional airport probably will be needed in Orange County, use of the Palmdale and Ontario airports will increase, and a rail line connecting the area’s airports will be needed. Even so, Moore says, the number of passengers using LAX may increase by nearly 50%.

Moore oversees the department’s operations from an office in LAX’s control tower, six floors below the air traffic controllers who guide the airport’s 1,600 flights a day. Moore’s task is to oversee the physical plant at the airport--everything from negotiating terminal agreements with airlines and concessionaires to maintaining the four runways. The Federal Aviation Administration is in charge of air traffic operations.

Moore commutes to work from a condominium in Culver City, where he and his wife of 47 years, Betty, live. The couple, who also own a home in the Antelope Valley, have three grown children.

Does Without Trappings

Even though department officials who work under Moore have had their offices redecorated over the years, Moore has seen no need to upgrade his; it has the same functional look it had the day he moved in. Nor does he see any reason--despite feelings to the contrary by some co-workers--to trade in the city-owned Chevrolet sedan he has driven for 11 years.

“He certainly doesn’t feel the need for the trappings,” said Virginia Black, who was the department’s public relations director for 11 years until she retired this summer.

Over the years, Moore, whose hobby is writing short fiction based on his childhood in Massachusetts, has earned a reputation among department employees as being accessible and “a very moral man,” Black said.

One day, Black recalled, she walked into his office and discovered him poring over a computer printout of the department’s telephone bill. When she asked what he was doing, he said he was adding up his personal calls, including local ones, so he could pay for them.

“He just does what is right,” Black said.

Moore, whose annual salary of $143,863 makes him the second-highest paid city department head (Paul Lane at the Department of Water and Power makes $150,566), is also known for a droll sense of humor. One recent morning he sat in his office with two consultants hired by the Regional Airport Authority, whose members represent Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The authority was formed by Moore to study the region’s airport needs.

Jokes About Future

As the discussion turned to airport capacity, the three joked that the area’s airports might become so congested in coming years that travelers could be restricted to certain airports. If they showed up at the wrong one, one of the consultants said, they would be turned away.

“No,” Moore said, archly. “Vaporized.

“We don’t want them polluting the air when they are told they have to get in their cars and go back to where they came from.”

Moore said he had no intention of staying at the Department of Airports when he was hired in 1959 to oversee construction of the first jet terminal at LAX. He had been head of grounds and buildings for the Culver City Unified School District and before that worked for the city of Los Angeles at its Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant. His first jobs with the city were in construction and electronics.

But his interest in aviation grew, and he decided to stay on.

In the mid-60s, he turned down a job to head the Southern California Rapid Transit District, even though it would have nearly doubled his pay, according to his wife. In 1966, he became first deputy general

manager for the Department of Airports and, two years later, was elevated to the top job when then-General Manager Francis Fox joined the Howard Hughes organization.

Since becoming the department’s general manager, Moore has seen the number of employees under him grow from about 700 to more than 1,500. The number of passengers that pass through LAX--the third-busiest airport in the nation behind Chicago’s O’Hare and Atlanta’s Hartsfield--has more than doubled from 20.3 million a year in 1968 to 44.8 million last year. About 40 major airlines use the airport, about double the number in 1968.

‘Monumental Achievement’

“Clif Moore didn’t make California grow or Los Angeles grow,” said Seeley, the city lobbyist. “But just trying to keep up on the air traffic growth is a monumental” achievement.

Among the reasons why Moore has been able to keep on top of the growth, according to those who have worked with him, are his abilities to delegate authority and win the respect of department critics. Former City Councilwoman Pat Russell, who represented the airport area in the early ‘70s when Westchester residents were angry over jet noise and the condemnation of more than 2,800 homes, said Moore “never played games trying to please the crowd in public.”

“Regardless of whether we were agreeing or disagreeing, I could always count on him to be honest,” Russell said.

Moore downplays such accolades, although he is obviously proud of his work in combatting airport noise. The Federal Aviation Administration honored him in 1975 with its highest civilian award, recognizing his efforts to persuade airlines to use quieter planes.

“I was an anti-aircraft-noise leader to the point where the airlines hated me,” he said.

Frustrated by Politicians

And despite his success in working with politicians, Moore admits to being frustrated by them because their jobs often require responding to present-day problems at the expense of good planning.

“Their sights aren’t high enough,” he said. “They are so engrossed in today’s problems and trying to fix potholes, that it is difficult for them to say: ‘Well, I not only have to fix those potholes, but I have to double-deck that whole damn freeway for 40 miles and how am I going to do it, and if I don’t do it, what am I going to do?’ ”

Moore attributes rapid airport growth not only to the region’s population increase, but also to the boom in Pacific Rim trade in recent years. In addition, the deregulation of airlines in 1978 turned the world of aviation--and airports--inside out, he says.

“It changed the industry from what it was, which was sort of a business-oriented, upper-middle-class travel network, to a real true common carrier,” Moore said. “Now it’s more like the old Greyhound bus where everybody stood in line to get on and pushed and shoved a little bit and got the best seat they could.”

As for LAX in particular, Moore said the airport has been forced to grow faster than anticipated, largely because other airports in the region, such as Burbank and John Wayne--which are outside the city of Los Angeles--imposed restrictions after protests over noise. In 1987, LAX handled about 75% of the region’s air passengers, according to LAX planners.

Nevertheless, Moore believes LAX can grow to accommodate 65 million passengers a year--a 48% increase from last year’s total. At that point it will have reached capacity given present air traffic technology, according to airport planners. To accommodate such growth, Moore said, a number of projects--most aimed at handling ground traffic congestion--must be completed.

Just how much more LAX should be allowed to grow will be the subject of public hearings expected to begin this fall, and Moore expects people who live near the airport to call for limits. Already, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose area includes the airport, has said she fears airport officials have not adequately studied the impact of expansion. She wants other airports to handle more of the passenger load.

Court Challenge

But Moore believes any attempt to limit the number of passengers would probably be challenged in court by airlines, which have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on new facilities at the airport.

Alan Wayne, regional director of public affairs for United Airlines, LAX’s biggest tenant, said his company and others would likely oppose any move to limit passenger levels. “We have a major investment in the facility,” Wayne said. “At this point this is where the market is; Los Angeles is the focal point for all Pacific Rim cargo and passenger traffic. Thoughts of constraining or rolling back the growth would be unacceptable to United Airlines and I would assume to our competing airlines.”

Even if LAX is allowed to handle 65 million passengers a year, Moore said airports in the region will soon be hard-pressed to handle traveler demand. The Southern California Assn. of Governments (SCAG), a planning group, predicts that the number of airline passengers passing through LAX, Ontario, John Wayne, Long Beach and Burbank airports will increase more than 50% by the year 2000, from 58.3 million to 88.4 million. Moore himself predicts that by the year 2010, there will “certainly be a doubling of air passengers” in the region, compared to the present level.

Ontario Expansion Limited

What Moore sees happening is the construction of another airport, not in Los Angeles but probably in Orange County. (County officials there are under a federal court order to find an airport site.) He also sees the Ontario airport, which last year handled nearly 4.6 million passengers, continuing to grow until passenger levels reach 12 million a year. Because of poor air quality in the Ontario area, he said, further expansion of that facility is probably unlikely.

Moore also sees the gradual development of Palmdale, where three airlines once offered service until a lack of business prompted them to close down all operations by 1983. Indeed, SCAG assumes that 12 years from now, 800,000 passengers annually will use that airport.

Moore, the visionary, predicts that if air travel is to remain “demand-oriented instead of some sort of regulatory affair,” an efficient rail system linking the region’s airports must be built.

Such a system, which he concedes would cost billions of dollars and be a political nightmare, would not only give airlines more flexibility in scheduling flights, but would keep automobiles and other vehicles off highways and out of the airports. Travelers, he said, might leave from LAX on a trip to San Francisco and return by way of Palmdale.

Accepting Restrictions

“People may have to be willing to accept that the voyage begins when they get to the plane, no matter where it is,” he said.

As for himself, Moore said he has made no decision about when he might step down from his job, even though he has reached an age when most people have retired or are at least thinking about it. He said he’ll probably give the matter some thought when he turns 67 next January. Moore said airport commissioners have told him he can keep his job as long as he wants it.

“He may leave the airport one day, but I don’t think he wants to,” Betty Moore said. “He is never happier than when he is solving a problem.”