Port Board Implored to Upgrade Lindbergh : Airport: Filner makes plea as two council colleagues move to revive the idea of expanding Brown Field.

San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner, arguing that Lindbergh Field will not be replaced for 20 years, Thursday urged the Board of Port Commissioners to implement plans for a long-term expansion of the city’s airport.

“The Navy is not going to move out of Miramar, the Marines are not going to move out of MCRD (Marine Corps Recruit Depot) and the mountains are not going to move out of Otay Mesa,” Filner said Thursday at a San Diego Assn. of Governments meeting.

Meanwhile, council members Linda Bernhardt and Ron Roberts said they may ask the City Council to consider expanding Brown Field and realigning its runways, a proposal that could require a review of the council’s November decision to lift a one-year building moratorium on Otay Mesa.

The two council members, speaking at a meeting of the committee advising Sandag on airport siting, said that they may ask the newly composed council to clarify whether it wants to take another look at siting an airport on a larger portion of Otay Mesa.

Bernhardt and Councilman John Hartley have taken office since the council lifted the building ban around most of Brown Field on Nov. 14.

Roberts, who had been the main proponent of a cooperative arrangement with Mexico to build a new airport adjacent to the one in Tijuana, has in recent months abandoned discussion of that idea in favor of a proposed “multiple airport” solution that would utilize Lindbergh in concert with an expanded Brown Field and other, small general aviation airports. Toward that end, a consultant hired by two Otay Mesa developers proposed two parallel southwest to northeast runways at Brown Field.

That plan suffered a major setback Thursday when a Sandag consultant said that the configuration could not be used for a major international airport because the nearby San Ysidro Mountains would force much steeper than normal takeoffs and landings. The consultant, Phillip R. Lindberg of KPMG Peat Marwick, also said that air traffic into Tijuana airport would complicate landing procedures.

Nevertheless, the Sandag committee refused requests by Filner and County Supervisor Brian Bilbray to end study of Brown Field as a potential airport. In a 6-2 vote, the panel recommended that the study be sent to the Federal Aviation Authority for review. That decision must be approved by Sandag’s Board of Directors, which meets Feb. 23. Bernhardt and Roberts want the city to consider whether to study a configuration that would point the runways more to the north and south.

In the meantime, Filner wants port commissioners to begin implementing one of two multimillion dollar plans for expansion of Lindbergh to accommodate air traffic increases between now and 2010.