More Roar in the O.C. Sky

Construction of the new terminal building at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport is on schedule, and officials say the new terminal will open, as planned, on April 1, 1990.

With the opening of the new terminal in a mere 10 months will come a significant increase in daily flights. They will jump from an average of about 87 per day to somewhere between 115 and 160 per day because the existing 4.75-million-passenger limit will be increased to 8.4 million per year.

A high-stakes competition is now under way to determine how many of those flights will go to each of the nine major airlines presently serving the county and the two on the waiting list. The airport staff is completing its recommendation, which will be the first reallocation of the airport’s access plan in five years. The proposed new allocations will be shown to the airlines before they are formally presented to the county Airport Commission and Board of Supervisors, which is now expected to happen sometime in July.

The new allotment schedule has tremendous financial impact for the carriers as well as passengers. Conservative estimates say that each additional flight means about $750,000 a year in additional profit for a carrier.

Fares between Orange County and other cities have traditionally been higher than those to the same cities from Los Angeles, Ontario or Long Beach, because of the high demand and limited number of flights allowed under the legal access agreement reached several years ago with Newport Beach. According to airport officials, the average fare paid by a passenger at John Wayne is $400. A recent nationwide survey set the national average for business travelers, who usually pay the most because they less frequently qualify for budget fares, at $290.

John Wayne needs increased competition and more flights to help reduce air fares and open new markets and destinations to county residents. Airlines with the fewest daily flights, such as United and Alaska, and commercial carriers on the waiting list to fly out of John Wayne, which include Southwest and Braniff, would like to see the county throw out all the old allocations and start from scratch in determining new flight allocations that will probably remain in effect for 15 years.

Present carriers now serving Orange County, like American and USAir, which already have the largest number of daily flights, believe that it would be unfair to scrap the existing allocation system entirely. Considering their investment in quieter aircraft, they present a strong argument for a pro rata approach. Some of the basic flights should be redistributed to encourage more competition and new markets, but the emphasis must remain on environmental issues like noise reduction, and airlines that make the investment in new quieter equipment deserve to have more flights than those that do not.