Travelers Pay the Price for O.C. Airport’s Convenience

If Gary Lavender were just an occasional air traveler, he might not be too concerned about the extra bucks that he has to shell out to use John Wayne Airport.

But as a sales manager who logs about 175,000 miles a year in the skies, the Mission Viejo resident has become a bit unnerved by the price gap between Orange County and other Southland airports--so much so that he now flies out of other airports half the time just to keep within his business budget.

“Lots of times I don’t fly out of John Wayne because I can get much more reasonable fares at LAX and some of the other airports,” the 42-year-old Lavender said. “If I can save $75 to $100 on a road trip, I’ll take the trouble to drive up to L.A. to catch a plane.”

Industry experts blame the sky-high fares at John Wayne on a range of forces--the attraction of Orange County to business travelers who are willing to book flights first and ask questions later; a years-old environmental lawsuit that forced unusually severe flight restrictions, and the law of supply and demand.

The result is that many of the thousands of local residents who will fly into and out of Orange County this Memorial Day weekend will do so with less money in their pockets--sometimes much less.

Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation reveals that for 12 of the 14 major destinations across the nation, passengers at John Wayne pay higher average fares than their counterparts at the three other major airports in the area--Los Angeles International, Long Beach and Ontario; for the remaining two destinations, Orange County is a close second.

And while the four airports are separated by only a few dozen miles geographically, the gap in dollars can be dramatic: an average round-trip ticket to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, for example, would cost $156 more from John Wayne than from Ontario.

“The demand is very high in Orange County, and the supply is just not there; we refer to it as our ‘boutique market,’ ” said Dianne LaPorte, vice president of operations for the Santa Ana-based World Travel Bureau, which operates 17 area travel agencies.

Even with all the current construction and parking problems to muddle through at the airport, she said, “the location is very convenient for all the local business people who are willing to pay whatever it takes to get there.”

People like Grant Lund.

A J.C. Penney store manager in the Sacramento area who sometimes has to travel for business on short notice, Lund paid $315 for a round-trip flight into Orange County last week in order to attend a meeting in Buena Park. That’s about the same price as he would have paid had he used Los Angeles International--but $37 more than if he had used Ontario.

“In my case, the expense isn’t a factor” in using John Wayne, Lund said. “It’s the convenience.”

Business people, often traveling on short notice through Orange County, are plentiful enough to ensure substantial profits for locally based airlines--profits that some industry specialists suggest make the airport one of the most profitable in the nation. Local airport administrators say that perhaps 80% of their passengers are business travelers, compared to an average national rate of about 55%.

The remaining casual fliers, however, saddled with the higher rates, may be out of luck--or on the road to Ontario.

“It’s ridiculous,” San Clemente resident Charles Hayden said of the ticket fares as he dragged a suitcase through construction zones at John Wayne this past week, just returned from a trip to Nashville with his wife.

Hayden said he checked fares for the same trip out of Los Angeles--and found that he could have saved $60. But in the end, he decided grudgingly that it wasn’t worth the drive or the hassle.

“I guess it’s just something you have to put up with for the convenience,” he grumbled.

Not all agree. Consider Lavender, the sales manager from Mission Viejo.

The frequent flier says he used to fly to such spots as Chicago and New York City out of area airports other than John Wayne about a quarter of the time; now, combating what he sees as an increase in the Orange County gap in the last year, he seeks out other takeoff sites about half the time.

That means a freeway trek of more than an hour from Mission Viejo to either Ontario or Long Beach, and sometimes more than two hours to Los Angeles International--compared with about 25 minutes to John Wayne, Lavender says. But he added: “With those kinds of dollar differences, a lot of times it’s worth the drive.”

No solid data is available on whether the gap between Orange County and the three other major area airports is actually growing. (The Burbank airport is a bit far even for most cost-conscious travelers.) Some industry officials do say, however, that they seem to be seeing more casual fliers seeking out other airports rather than paying the extra money.

“The leisurely traveler who’s looking for the best price seems to be giving more consideration now to traveling out of Ontario or Los Angeles,” said LaPorte, the travel agency executive.

Added Jack Keady, regional marketing manager for American Airlines: “We’ve discovered that people will travel enormous distances to save what for us would be considered small amounts of money.”

Industry specialists such as John Wayne Airport Manager George Rebella suggest that the ongoing airport expansion--now mired in controversy by cost overruns and delays--could help bring fares down by nearly doubling the site’s annual passenger capacity to 8.4 million people. Another regional airport is also in the works but is still years away.

But others, such as American Airlines’ Keady, assert that there is such a terrific local demand among business travelers that, while there may be a temporary sag in fares as airport capacity expands, John Wayne prices would likely resume their place atop the local airports.

Why? Beyond the heavy presence of local business travelers, industry officials say the price gap centers on years of litigation against the county by the city of Newport Beach and various citizen groups, resulting in a 1985 settlement.

The litigants’ complaints about noise and environmental concerns at the airport prompted a master plan, recently revised, that placed caps on the numbers of carriers, flights, passengers and noise levels, and also banned nighttime jet flights.

“The Orange County airport is one of, if not the most, artificially constrained airports in the nation,” said Roger Cohen of the Air Transport Assn. in Washington. “And the higher prices that you see are the clear result of those restrictions on access and capacity.”

To understand the restrictions at John Wayne, one need only consider that:

In Orange County, with a population of 2.3 million people, the number of annual passengers is capped at 4.6 million; by contrast, in Los Angeles, a county of 8.8 million people, there were about 44 million passengers last year at its main airport--or nearly 10 times as many fliers in a county just over three times as big.

With those kind of supply-and-demand forces at work, officials say, airlines at John Wayne are essentially dealing from a stacked deck; because for every person resigned to making a trip to Long Beach or Ontario for a cheaper flight, there is likely someone right behind in line with bags packed and credit card drawn, willing to pay the price.

Staff writer Eric Bailey contributed to this story.

THE COST OF FLYING

Average one-way fares to five major markets from John Wayne Airport and three other Southland airports. From O.C. To Chicago: $260 From LAX To Chicago: $205 From Long Beach To Chicago: $194 From Ontario To Chicago: $205 From O.C. To Dallas-Fort Worth: $264 From LAX To Dallas-Fort Worth: $215 From Long Beach To Dallas-Fort Worth: $225 From Ontario To Dallas-Fort Worth: $230 From O.C. To New York City: $282 From LAX To New York City: $248 From Long Beach To New York City: $211 From Ontario To New York City: $204 From O.C. To San Francisco: $81 From LAX To San Francisco: $67 From Long Beach To San Francisco: $72 From Ontario To San Francisco: $57 From O.C. To Washington: $244 From LAX To Washington: $201 From Long Beach To Washington: $222 From Ontario To Washington: $208 Note: Chicago fares are for O’Hare International Airport; New York city fares are for John F. Kennedy Airport; Washington fares are for National Airport.

Source: The U.S. Department of Transportation, based on year-end 1989 surveys using a random sample of 10% of all tickets purchased. Fare prices do not include 8% federal tax .