Airline Fails to Take Off From Palomar : Transportation: Pan Am Commuter sputters, files for bankruptcy protection without ever flying from North County to Los Angeles.

A small airline that won approval from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors last August to provide commuter flights between Palomar Airport in Carlsbad and Los Angeles International Airport has entered bankruptcy proceedings before service could begin.

Orange County-based Resort Commuter Airlines, which contracted with Pan American World Airways and used the name Pan Am Commuter, was expected to offer up to six non-stop flights a day and trade upon North County’s growing commuter population.

Service was to begin on Sept. 25, but Palomar Airport Manager Rick Severson said Wednesday that Pan Am Commuter didn’t pay its $750-a-month rent and failed to arrive with staff or equipment despite frequent promises.

“From September until mid-November, they kept saying they’d start next week or next month,” Severson said. “They never flew one flight out of here.”

County supervisors awarded the firm a two-year permit Aug. 22 to run the 40-minute flights from Palomar, but Severson said the airline never paid its bill. The airline was very weak financially and went bankrupt, he said.

The bankruptcy filing was confirmed Wednesday by Bill Crilly, vice president of operations for the airline. “The company, Resort Commuter, filed Chapter 11 on Nov. 17. There is no immediate plan to start service from Carlsbad,” Crilly said.

Crilly said the company is seeking financial backing to rekindle the service, but so far nothing promising has developed.

The announcement months ago about commuter service drew considerable interest. “Our telephones were ringing at a rate of 10 to 20 calls a day. There are a lot of people out there who want a commuter service,” Severson recalled.

For now, though, the only such flights available between San Diego County and Los Angeles originate from Lindbergh Field near downtown.

Severson said space remains at Palomar for a commuter service, but “we have nobody interested now in pursuing it.” He said Pan Am Commuter’s demise marks the seventh time since the airport opened in 1960 that a proposed commuter service has failed to materialize or an existing commuter operation has gone out of business.

The latest failure is especially disappointing, he said, because North County growth has finally provided enough commuters to support such a service.

However, the fate of Pan Am Commuter isn’t mourned by everybody, especially Barbara Donovan, a member of the Palomar Airport Committee and a former member of the Carlsbad City Council.

Donovan said Wednesday that she was “shocked” to learn about the bankruptcy but elated that residents near Palomar Airport will be spared what she had predicted would be increased noise and air traffic.

“There are a lot of problems with noise generating from the airport. I thought Pan Am would be opening the door” to more air operations at Palomar, Donovan said. Last June, she was on the losing side of a 6-4 airport committee vote that recommended approval of the Pan Am Commuter permit to county supervisors.

Donovan said she also suspected that Pan Am Commuter mechanics would disturb airport neighbors by revving airplane engines during routine maintenance. “It is a loud, protracted sound. It is most annoying,” she said.

Although Donovan acknowledges that there are many potential air commuters in North County, she believes the area must be protected, even if it means traveling to Lindbergh Field for flights. “There probably is a need, but we don’t have to be all things to all people. If people need to go to L.A., let them go to San Diego.”

But commuter service from Palomar has supporters who insist that strict operating conditions would minimize noise or disruption.

Severson said that, under Pan Am Commuter’s now-canceled permit, flights would have been limited to between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., quieter turbo-prop planes with no more than 30 seats would have been used, and special routes would have been flown to avoid residential areas.

Pan Am World Airways officials did not return a phone call Wednesday, so it could not be immediately learned how the bankruptcy has affected the company’s relationship with the commuter airline.