Private Jets Squeeze Out Small Planes in Lesson of Economic Evolution
On the afternoon of Dec. 7, 1941, hours after Japanese bombers struck Pearl Harbor, U.S. Army officers drove up to Van Nuys Airport and commandeered the dirt-strip airfield for the war effort.
In less than a month, the sleepy country airport was transformed into a bustling military complex.
The changes taking place these days at the central San Fernando Valley airfield are occurring more slowly than those rushed through 49 years ago by the Air Corps.
But many in the aviation community think that over time, they will be as dramatic.
Ever since the Air Force moved out after the war, Van Nuys Airport has served as a training ground and playground for tens of thousands of private pilots. As a result, the Los Angeles City-owned facility has long been the world’s busiest general aviation field and currently is the seventh-busiest airport in the nation, although it has no scheduled commercial air service.
Current trends suggest that a decade from now the airport will be as much an office complex as an aviation facility. And although it might still lead the nation in takeoffs and landings 10 years from now, weekend pleasure fliers with their Cessnas and Pipers will have been largely replaced by private jets.
Both trends began about a decade ago and homeowners, pleasure pilots and airport officials disagree over whether airport managers should allow the trends to continue or seek to reverse them.
In 1979, there were 1,333 piston-engine planes at Van Nuys Airport; today there are only 711.
During the same 11 years, the number of jets based at the airport grew from 18 to 93.
The jets seem to be winning out for scarce space at the airport through a Darwinian process in which only the economically fittest survive.
The airport does not rent space directly to airplane owners. Instead, it rents land to aircraft-related businesses and leaves it largely up to them whether they will cater to jets or piston craft.
Business operators say that renting and servicing jets, and leasing space for jets, which are favored by corporate executives and high rollers who don’t blink at spending thousands of dollars an hour to get somewhere in a hurry and are willing to pay higher rates, is far more profitable than doing business with owners of piston craft.
The list of regular jet users at Van Nuys Airport includes many of Southern California’s biggest employers--Litton Industries, Hughes Aircraft, General Motors, Great Western Savings. Also regularly appearing on the airport’s flight log are many of the Southland’s movers and shakers: sports and publishing mogul Jack Kent Cooke, Chatsworth computer chip maker Tandon Jawahar and former President Ronald Reagan.
Airport officials agree that pitting jets against pistons sometimes seems to be an unfair contest, particularly since pleasure fliers who use piston engines have already been buffeted during the 1980s by sharply higher insurance and maintenance costs.
But the officials nonetheless characterize the advances made by jets as being as natural as the triumph of weeds over flowers in an untended garden.
“As a government agency, we cannot give anything away,” said airport Manager Charles Zeman. “We have to get fair market value for the land we rent out to fixed-base operators.”
Under contracts with tenants, the airport raises its rent every five years. Last February, the cost per acre was increased to $14,000 per year, up 32% from the $10,600 set in 1985.
That has resulted in the fixed-base operators charging an average tie-down rate of $120 a month for a single-engine plane at Van Nuys Airport compared to $72 a month for Santa Monica Municipal Airport and $76 a month for Whiteman Airport in Pacoima. Zeman said the higher rate at Van Nuys “sounds a lot more reasonable when you compare the facilities here with other airports,” citing what he said were superior repair and maintenance facilities, firefighting apparatus and security patrols.
But Lee Kanon Alpert, chairman of the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, said that the small planes are leaving for other fields because airport officials “have jacked up the rents so high that the cost of a tie-down has gone through the roof.”
He advocates a two-tiered rental system in which operators that rent to owners of piston-engine planes would pay less rent than those that serve jet owners.
“That way you could serve the entire aviation community and still keep adequate revenue coming in,” Alpert said. “But I would be surprised if the Department of Airports went for that because everything they do seems oriented to maximizing income.”
Airport officials say that a two-tiered plan would be difficult to administer, since many of the airport operators service both jets and piston-engine planes.
The same economic forces that are bringing in more jets are bringing about the transformation of much of the 735-acre airport into an office and hotel complex.
The Board of Airport Commissioners, which runs the city’s airports, is pushing for Van Nuys Airport to generate more income in anticipation of the December, 1992, expiration of long-term contracts that benefit commercial airlines. Those contracts obligate the city to use revenue in excess of airport operating costs to lower landing fees at Los Angeles International and Ontario airports.
Once those contracts expire, however, airport revenue in excess of costs could be used to help pay for general city operations.
“I’m hearing from some council members, including more than one from the Valley, who want to see us make a profit on airports as soon as we can,” said airport Commissioner Samuel Greenberg. He declined to identify which council members he was referring to.
Throughout the 1980s, the department has allowed small parcels of land on the airport’s perimeter to be leased for mostly single-building commercial developments.
But in recent years, the pace of commercial development has accelerated.
In April, a consultant recommended that a massive office complex be developed at the former Air National Guard site on Balboa Boulevard. A report said the 1 million square feet of office space would generate $4.7 million a year in lease income, more than half the airport’s $8.2 million in revenue during the fiscal year that ended June 30.
The board shelved the plan without comment after homeowners protested that it would produce massive traffic tie-ups on Balboa and Roscoe boulevards. Further, aviation enthusiasts complained because only 16 acres of the base’s 94 acres in the airport’s northwest corner would be set aside for parking and servicing airplanes.
The department staff is expected to make a new recommendation for the site in about six months.
While that site’s future remains clouded, the commission has tentatively approved a 123,000-square-foot mixed-use development on Valjean Avenue north of the Van Nuys Airtel Plaza Hotel, and has reacted favorably to another proposed project of about the same size on Hayvenhurst Avenue.
Airport staff members are negotiating with both developers.
Also under consideration are two competing proposals for a 38-acre site on Woodley Avenue being vacated by Volpar Aircraft Corp. Each plan contains more than 700,000 square feet of office space and about one-fourth that much for hangars.
If all the suggested plans are allowed to go through, Zeman predicted, the airport could produce a profit for the city of about $8 million a year.
“These development plans are ridiculous,” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and founder of the anti-noise group Ban Airport Noise.
“They are way too intensive for our area. Getting in and out on Woodley is tough already, and these would make it all but impossible.”
He said the homeowner group does not object to mixed-use development. “But we oppose the massive size of these plans,” he said.
Ultimately, the fate of proposed large-scale developments on airport property is likely to rest with the council, which has given no public indication of how it feels about generating revenue from the airport.
In 1987, under homeowner pressure, the council rezoned the airport’s 735 acres to require that a conditional-use permit be obtained for any development larger than 10,000 square feet. All such permits can be appealed to the council.
Zeman acknowledged that the council might pull the airport commission up short in its move to develop the airport property with high-yield office projects.
“It remains to be seen how this will play itself out,” he said. “I’m sure that over time we will evolve more into a revenue-generating facility, but I can’t predict how soon that will happen or to what extent.”
VAN NUYS AIRPORT AT A GLANCE
* Airplanes Based at Van Nuys Airport 1979: Jets, 18; Piston-engine, 1,333. Total, 1,351 1985: Jets, 51; Piston-engine, 977. Total, 1,028 1990: Jets, 93; Piston-engine, 711. Total, 804
* Tie-Down Rates
Comparison of monthly rates for single-engine airplanes at small, local airports. Van Nuys: $120 Whiteman: $76 Santa Monica: $72 Rate average. Rates vary from $100-$140 Source: L.A. Dept. of Airports.
