Plan to Close Runway Has Airlines Worrying About Christmas, 1989

Next year, during some of the heaviest holiday-traffic days at John Wayne Airport, travelers could be spending much of their time simply waiting to take off or land. Airport officials plan to close one of the airport’s two runways for up to 10 weeks while a new taxiway is built.

The airlines are so concerned about the potential for delays that they have offered to pay to speed the construction even if it means that crews will have to work around the clock, airport operations chief Christine Edwards told airport commissioners this week.

Officials are trying to devise an alternative, but so far their plan is to close runway 19 Left, a 2,888-foot strip that handles about 1,600 takeoffs and landings of small private planes and twin-engine commuter craft per day.

Under current plans, the runway would be used as a temporary taxiway while the regular taxiway is replaced as part of the airport’s $310-million expansion program. The taxiway project will cost $12.1 million.

All 1,600 operations would be shifted to runway 19 Right, a 5,700-foot strip that now handles the 160 daily arrivals and departures of commercial jets at the airport.

Peak Days

Although the December-January period is the lightest in passenger numbers at John Wayne, Christmas and New Year’s days are as busy as peak summer travel days, Edwards said Thursday.

Airport officials are working with the Federal Aviation Administration, Air Transport Assn. and the Orange County Airport Assn. to try to find an alternative to closing a runway.

“If the runway is closed, the airport will be basically gridlocked,” said Scott Raphael, an aviation lawyer and vice president of the 200-member Orange County Airport Assn., which includes pilots and aircraft service businesses at John Wayne. “The commercial carriers would use up all of the available takeoff and landing capacity of the remaining runway during daylight hours, and nobody else would be able to get out without significant delays.”

Air traffic controllers would be forced to impose so-called “flow control,” in which some airline flights from places such as Dallas and Sacramento would be held there until their estimated time of arrival could coincide with an available landing “appointment” in Orange County.

“Essentially, the airlines are willing to pay additional funding for putting double shifts on to shorten the project,” said George Carver, western regional director of the Airport Transport Assn., which counts 22 member air carriers. “With one runway closed, there’s only a certain amount of aircraft you can get off the ground in a certain period of time, and the airlines are concerned about customer dissatisfaction, missed connections and delays that could cost the airlines more than what they would have to pay to complete the work in as short a time as possible.”

Proposal Being Studied

Carver said no dollar figures have been discussed yet, pending results of a study of the proposed extra one or two shifts.

Also, experts are still trying to quantify what the flight delays might be but have no estimates so far, Edwards said.

One option involves having planes taxi from the passenger terminal across both airport runways in order to get them to the western taxiway near the control tower. But this means planes would cross in front of arriving and departing aircraft. Doing so would add to the safety risk, Edwards said, and the FAA may not allow it. Also, she said, air traffic controllers would have to delay flights to allow for cross traffic.

Raphael, however, said such crossings can be done quickly and are handled routinely at the Nashville, Tenn., airport and elsewhere.