San Diego

A consulting firm that last month dismissed the feasibility of putting a major commercial airport at Brown Field reported Thursday that a new facility there might be possible if aircraft could occasionally approach over Mexico.

Dan Haney, senior manager for KPMG Peat Marwick, told a San Diego Assn. of Governments panel that a two-runway airport on Otay Mesa could handle 200,000 takeoffs and landings yearly, or about the number of airliners accommodated at Lindbergh Field last year.

The airport would have to be part of a multiple-airport configuration using both an expanded Brown Field and Lindbergh to handle the region’s air traffic, Haney said.

In a March 12 letter distributed at Thursday’s meeting, Haney told a Sandag official that “we recently submitted a report indicating that two suggested sites on (Otay) Mesa do not appear feasible because of airspace problems. We hope that we did not convey the impression that there were not alternatives that might prove attractive.”

Haney proposed an airport consisting of a realigned 12,000-foot runway at Brown Field parallel to Tijuana International Airport, and a 9,000-foot northwest-to-southeast runway east of Brown Field.

The configuration would require aircraft landing from the southeast to approach over Mexican airspace about 25% of the time, necessitating “a combined U.S./Mexican air traffic control arrangement.” Planes bound for Mexico and the United States could alternate using the approach area, Haney said.

Last month, Haney’s firm told Sandag that two proposed layouts for an Otay Mesa airport are not possible because the nearby San Ysidro Mountains would force much steeper than normal takeoffs and landings.