Officials Predict Palmdale Airport Finally Here to Stay : Transportation: Two carriers expect a record 46,000 passengers in the first year since the terminal reopened.

Los Angeles city airport officials predicted this week that the fledgling Palmdale Regional Airport is finally here to stay, with two well-established carriers expected to draw a record 46,000 passengers in the first year since the terminal reopened in January.

America West Airlines and Skywest, the two carriers flying out of Palmdale, said their flights there have been about one-third full. That is well below the industry’s standard, but both airlines called it a good load factor for a developing market such as Palmdale.

The passenger projections by airport officials and the airlines’ load factor rates, disclosed at an airport supporters meeting in Palmdale, were the first public indications of how much business the airport has done since airline service resumed his year after a five-year hiatus.

Representatives of the two carriers said they had been attracting enough passengers to at least break even on their Palmdale operations. However, they warned that higher ticket prices--due to increases in jet fuel costs because of the Middle East crisis--could change that.

William Schoenfeld, deputy executive director of the Los Angeles Department of Airports, which operates the Palmdale airport, said it drew 36,144 passengers for the 10 months through October. And he predicted the airport would handle at least 10,000 more people during November and December.

Since the city of Los Angeles opened it in mid-1971, the small terminal had a succession of mostly small, commuter air services come and go until the last one pulled out in 1985. In all those years, Schoenfeld said Palmdale never had as many passengers as expected this year.

America West began servicing Palmdale on Jan. 2 and now offers four daily flights to Las Vegas and one to Phoenix. Skywest moved in June 1 and now offers seven daily flights to Los Angeles International Airport.

Schoenfeld said airport officials have an estimated $60-million plan to expand the terminal, which sits on land leased from adjoining Air Force Plant 42. But he said that would not proceed until the airport gets close to the 250,000 passenger-a-year capacity of the current terminal.

Also, Schoenfeld said, airport officials plan in January, after months of delays, to solicit proposals for the first major commercial-industrial development on about 440 acres of the 17,500 acres owned by the city nearby, where Los Angeles officials still hope to build a major airport.