Palomar Airport Outgrowing Neighbors

Hugh Lyttleton’s single-engine Cessna reduces a two-hour commute from Carlsbad to Santa Monica to a 45-minute flight.

No need to stick to the schedules of commuter airlines flying out of Lindbergh Field.

He also avoids the Interstate 5 “parking lot.”

And his luggage never gets lost.

Lyttleton is one of an increasing number of professionals who fly their private airplanes out of Palomar Airport, expanding their business range, flexibility and time.

“It’s a trade-off,” said the accountant, who bought his four-seat plane six months ago. “You can get there less expensively by taking your car, but, from a business standpoint, you just don’t have time to drive.”

Lyttleton, whose office is in Carlsbad, flies out of Palomar about once a week, both on business and for pleasure, and he is not alone.

North County’s expanding population and industry has meant an increased use of Palomar Airport, now the region’s busiest civilian airport based on takeoffs and landings, said Rick Severson, program coordinator for county airports and a former Palomar Airport manager.

“Palomar offers some kind of alternative transportation system to North County residents in way of commuting to, primarily, Los Angeles,” Severson said.

During 1989, there were 230,744 takeoffs and landings from Palomar, an average of 630 a day. That represents a 20% increase from 192,000 flights in 1987. By comparison, Lindbergh Field had 209,640 takeoffs and landings in 1989.

About 60% of Palomar flights are business related, Severson said.

Although its business has grown, the airport has basically stayed the same since its 1959 opening, Severson said.

“Within the next 10 years, we’ll reach our capacity,” he said. “When you get to that point, there’s no place to park airplanes. The aviation services will have to go elsewhere.”

Severson blames the space crunch on residents who, in 1979, fearing more noise and congestion, killed proposals that would have added a second airstrip and extended the existing runway. Even so, the airport receives noise complaints from residents, and the Federal Aviation Administration is studying noise abatement measures, Severson said.

Residents feared that expansion would create a North County version of Lindbergh Field. An extension of the existing runway, they worried, would allow bigger, noisier airplanes to use the field.

But Palomar Airport officials have repeatedly denied having plans for larger airplanes, and Severson said that it is too late for expansion.

“All that has been shelved,” he said.

“In 1975, there was still bare ground around the airport where the county had intended to expand. Now the land has been sold to various corporations to develop an industrial park. The Koll Industrial Park, that’s where the second runway was going to go.”

The airport now is totally built out, he said.

The lack of a second runway has not discouraged aviators from flocking to the county-owned airfield. A new commuter service from Carlsbad to Los Angeles, run by Las Vegas-based Grand Airways, began April 2.

The weekday commuter service, with one-way tickets costing $49 to $69, has been running at capacity since it started, said Jackie Warner, assistant marketing director for Grand. The Saturday runs are being eliminated. “The planes were literally taking off empty,” Warner said. Only two flights will run Sunday, as opposed to the original four.

Grand Airways makes four trips each weekday from Carlsbad to Los Angeles with twin-engine Cessnas capable of holding nine passengers, Warner said. This summer, the company might introduce weekend flights to and from Las Vegas.

“It’s been fantastic,” Warner said of the weekday flights. “It just really surpassed expectations; they are going very, very well. Primarily we are getting the business traffic, and on Saturday we were hoping to pick up the leisure traffic, but that didn’t happen.”

Flight schools at Palomar Airport also have done a brisk business since the end of the recession in 1984, catering not only to professionals wanting to cut down on their commutes, but also to students and residents who love to fly.

“More businesses are established and growing,” said Dawn Comerford, general manager of Four Winds, a flight school based at Palomar. “More people are getting into aviation. They’re finding that, for the time they spend on the freeway for a business meeting, they can be there and back in a plane.

“But we have all kinds of people renting,” Comerford said. “We have a few that are students that are in college. We have people who rent just for recreation . . . and we have some business people who rent from us to go to Los Angeles for their business meetings. There is a wide variety of people who come through here.”

“Flying still has a mystique about it, and it’s something people want to do,” said Joan Boyle, a pilot and a teacher for Four Winds.

The flock of airplanes overhead raises another concern, aside from noise, among residents in the three residential neighborhoods under the airport’s flight path--Terramar to the west, and Solamar and Alta Mira, south of Terramar.

“Our biggest problem is safety,” said Alan Kindle, a resident of La Costa, about 5 miles from the airport, who has tried to bring attention to low-flying aircraft in the area.

“It boils down to the (Federal Aviation Administration’s) allowing light aircraft to skim the rooftops,” said Kindle, who says as many as 50 airplanes buzz over his El Aguila Street house on a busy Saturday. “It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

“This is a fairly dense residential area with churches and schools, condominiums, apartments and single-family homes, and there is really no supervision at the airport tower except to give clearance to land and take off.”

Airport manager Albert J. Ransom denies that, saying a three-man crew in an FAA control tower supervises all air traffic within a 3-mile radius of the airport, to an altitude of 3,000 feet.

Furthermore, the low-flying aircraft should not be a problem in the La Costa area, since most of the takeoffs and landings come from the northeast area of Palomar, not from the south, Ransom said.

“Some people see it as the noisier the aircraft is, the lower, but that’s not necessarily the case,” Ransom said, pointing out that factors such as how much throttle the pilot is applying and atmospheric conditions may effect noise levels, and thus the perception of flying low.

Ransom said noise complaints from residents living northeast of the airport, such as Shadowridge and neighborhoods in the southern part of Vista, are common, and a noise study is being conducted by the FAA to determine how to alter takeoff and landing patterns to alleviate the noise.

The $125,000 noise study will tell airport management where airplanes are making the most noise and how they can adjust flight patterns to lessen it. However, enforcement of those flight patterns is difficult, Ransom said.

Violations by individual aircraft are more difficult to identify, since objective noise measurements are rarely available and identification of the aircraft by residents on the ground is often difficult.

In the meantime, the city and county have very little latitude in regulating the noise problem.

“The FAA preempts us,” said Ted Marioncelli, an aide to county Supervisor John MacDonald, whose district includes the airport. “What we were trying to do for the longest time is to enforce single event noise violations, but we found out we have no enforcement authority. Once that plane is in the air, the FAA controls it.”

Residents in the three residential communities west of the airport, many of them retirees, have complained of the noise.

“It’s not necessarily a real problem now, but it’s heading that way,” said Patrick Johnson, a Terramar resident. “I’ve been here for five years, and I can see it creeping up on us.”

“I’m often woken up by airplanes in the morning,” Johnson said. “It used to happen very rarely, but nowadays it’s every morning.”

Residents in Shadowridge, a community in Vista, also have expressed noise concerns.

“We’re affected by some pilots that fly very low outside the perimeter of the airport,” said Klaas Meurs, a three-year resident of Shadowridge. “It’s hilly country here, and there are a lot of developments at 500 feet, and if pilots fly at 1,000 feet, they’re only 500 feet above the houses, and it’s quite noisy.”

But Meurs, a pilot himself for eight years, recognizes that “it’s only a very small percentage of pilots, considering the amount of movement at Palomar.”

Part of that growth has been aircraft owned by companies that were attracted to the city by the proximity of the airport.

“A lot of companies use their corporate planes to fly in and out, and there are many local businesses that have planes there,” said Lee Bohlmann, executive vice president of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce, which uses the airport as a tool to attract industry.

“Many people are not pleased with the service and the flight levels at Lindbergh Field,” Bohlmann said. Operating their own plane or taking commuter flights gives them better service and greater flexibility.

Tad Keegan, who, with several volunteers from Palomar College, is studying the airport’s impact on the Carlsbad business climate, said the airport brings significant revenue to the community.

“A small training airplane, if it’s used quite a bit, can generate up to $90,000 a year for the economy in general,” Keegan said, basing his figure on property taxes, maintenance, flight school tuition, fuel taxes, and airplane rental.

City officials say that, as long as airport noise stays within bounds, they are content.

“As long as it remains a general aviation airport, and we are able to maintain a 30 passengers or less limit on airplanes, I think Palomar Airport has done a lot for Carlsbad,” Mayor Bud Lewis said.