Pan Am Likely to Win Carlsbad-to-L.A. Route

An international airline hoping to cash in on North County’s population boom is proposing to launch a commuter service between Carlsbad and Los Angeles next month, and has promised to use planes so quiet that neighbors won’t even know they are there.

The County Board of Supervisors will decide today whether to grant a permit for Pan Am Commuter to begin operating at McClellan-Palomar Airport. The Federal Aviation Administration and county staff members have recommended approval of the permit, and the county supervisor whose district encompasses the airport, John MacDonald, has voiced his support.

With the approval of the permit all but certain, Pan Am Commuter, a Newport Beach-based subsidiary of Pan Am Airlines, is planning to run the first non-stop commuter flight from Palomar to Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 25, said company spokeswoman Paula Delshadi.

The price of the 40-minute flight is still being debated, but a one-way coach fare will be about $79, Delshadi said. First-class

amenities will be made available at a higher price, and discount fares for corporate accounts will be offered, she said.

The commuter flight service will cater primarily to business people, but will also serve international travelers hooking up with other Pan Am flights in Los Angeles.

The plane to be used is an 18-seat Twin Otter turbo-prop, one of the quietest aircraft in the skies today, according to Al Newman, San Diego County director of airports. “No one will know it’s there,” he said.

The two-year permit would allow a maximum of six departures a day, limit takeoffs and landings to the hours between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., and require pilots to use routes that minimize flying over residential areas, Newman said.

Pan Am Commuter has also promised to conduct the potentially noisy maintenance work on the planes at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Three violations of any of the restrictions could cause immediate revocation of the permit, he said.

Delshadi, a Carlsbad resident, said she feels that the airline has the support of the community. She noted that North County often plays the role of the “poor stepchild” to San Diego, and she believes the service “will lend some credibility to North County.”

Close Vote

The perceived support, however, barely materialized June 15 when the Palomar Airport Advisory Committee voted 6 to 4 to recommend approval of the permit to the Board of Supervisors.

Raymond Duty, a Carlsbad resident and member of the citizens commission, said he voted against it because of concerns about noise.

“The people that voted against it, including myself, felt that we were opening up a Pandora’s box,” Duty said Monday.

A federally funded noise study is scheduled to be conducted at the airport before the end of the year, but the four dissenting commissioners would have liked to have seen the results before endorsing the permit, Duty said.

The others who voted against the proposal were commission Chairman Jim Simmons, Carlsbad City Councilman Mark Pettine and Barbara Donovan.

“Palomar Airport has the highest volume of air traffic in the county,” Duty said, “and with North County growing so rapidly, we’re just going to have a situation we can’t control.

Previous Attempts Failed

“I thought we should wait until we could legitimately say there wasn’t going to be any increased noise level or accidents,” he said.

But, Duty conceded: “There’s not much we can do at this point. I don’t foresee anybody being able to legally do anything to stop it.”

Five previous attempts in the past 27 years to run commuter flights out of McClellan-Palomar to Los Angeles or other nearby destinations have ended in financial failure. No commuter service has operated there since 1986.

Airport manager Rick Severson said past commuter services failed because the North County business community was too small to support them.

“Nowadays, there are many commercial industrial developments around the airport, and the commuter airline now has a need to service,” he said.

No Traffic Problem

Severson said that handling the additional air traffic from the commuter flights would pose no problem. The airport has been operating well under capacity for its flights ever since the popularity of recreational flying took a nose dive in 1981.

Delshadi said Pan Am Commuter focused on Carlsbad as a result of marketing studies.

“We’ve seen the development in the Carlsbad area, and the growth there is phenomenal,” she said. “All sorts of industry is moving into the area, and we can grow as the economy there grows.”

Pan Am Commuter operates a commuter service between Orange County and Los Angeles, which started in September and has been very successful, said Delshadi.