USAir Pullout Not Viewed as Hurting Airport

USAir’s decision to cancel service to Orange County will have little long-term impact on John Wayne Airport’s finances, its noise-conscious neighbors or its passengers, airport manager Jan Mittermeier said Saturday.

Mittermeier predicted that all 22 of USAir’s landing slots at the airport will be snapped up by other airlines well before May 2, when USAir has said it will quit service to John Wayne and seven other West Coast airports.

“I don’t think we’re going to have any problems,” Mittermeier said. The airport has a waiting list, and five or six airlines telephoned her to express interest as soon as USAir announced its pullout Friday, she said.

Mittermeier declined to name the carriers until they put their interest in writing. However, on Friday, United Airlines told The Times it is “very interested,” Southwest Airlines said it will study the issue “very carefully,” and an Alaska Airlines executive said, “We’ll take all (the flight slots) we can get.”

Even if the slots were not immediately taken, the other airlines that use John Wayne would be required to pick up USAir’s share of the airport costs under a contract signed with the airport last August, Mittermeier said.

Under the terms of that contract, called an “access plan,” she explained, if the slots were vacant the costs of running the airport would simply be allocated among the other airline carriers still using the airport.

“Everybody else would just pick up the difference--which is why those slots are going to go,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense (for the remaining carriers) to pick up the tab out of your own pocket and not fly the airplanes.”

Hence the pullout should have “no effect” on the airport’s ability to meet payments on the roughly $240 million it borrowed to build the new Thomas F. Riley Terminal, which opened in September, she said.

Meeting the airport’s court-ordered noise restrictions will be a factor for some airlines, however.

Mittermeier said some of the USAir flights used noisier jets with decibel levels between 100 and 86, while others used quieter BAe-146 or “whisper jets” that emit less than 86 decibels.

Noise restrictions are also spelled out in the access plan, and any airline that bids on the USAir slots will have to meet those requirements, she said.

Moreover, Mittermeier said the USAir pullout may not necessarily mean higher fares for John Wayne passengers. On the contrary, an airline that picks up new routes might have to keep fares down in order to build up its clientele, she said.

“It’s very hard to say,” she said. “It depends on how the carriers decide to use those flights.”

Mittermeier, who has worked at John Wayne for 3 1/2 years and managed it since September, praised the professionalism of USAir employees and said she will “hate to see” the airline depart.

But she quickly added: “I don’t think it it’s going to affect service to the passenger or revenue to the airport in the long run.”