Mittermeier Style Rates a Thumbs-Up at Airport : Transportation: Despite some problems, administrator has kept John Wayne running smoothly and won the support of county and airline officials.

Jan Mittermeier had flown 3,000 miles and it didn’t matter that she wasn’t wanted here.

A meeting was about to be held in a conference room of the Federal Aviation Administration, and her arrival was only an irritant. This was a closed, working session for airline people, pilots and the FAA.

Mittermeier, a former accountant with no background in aviation, was only eight months into her job as manager of Orange County’s John Wayne Airport that day in June, 1991. But she was here to see what this working group was up to. And the answer, she learned, was that they sought to scuttle a takeoff procedure used on some jets to meet John Wayne Airport’s noise limits, the toughest in the nation.

“We’re not here to tell you what to do or to interfere in any way,” Mittermeier told Tony Broderick, a top-ranking FAA administrator. “All we want to do is observe, so that we know what’s going on.”

Mittermeier’s persistence paid off. In the next few months she attended several meetings, won the right to test any new takeoff procedures before the FAA tried to impose them, and converted Broderick into a strong admirer.

It was a vintage performance for Mittermeier, 52, whose doggedness and methodical style is now legend among officials in county government, the FAA and the airline industry.

“I find our progress, after more than a decade of bickering and confrontation, extraordinarily good,” Broderick said. “I believe we owe most of the success to date to Jan’s professionalism, patience and willingness to address difficult issues.”

Adds Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes the airport: “I knew she was good when we appointed her, but I didn’t know she was this good.”

But Mittermeier’s problems are far from over.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton, a strong Mittermeier supporter, nevertheless is talking about selling the airport out from under her to feed a cash-starved county government.

What’s more, the current round of jet-noise tests at John Wayne Airport, designed to test the FAA’s proposed new takeoff procedures, have nearby residents hollering for relief. The new procedures would allow airline pilots to cut back power at 800 feet rather than the current airline rule of 500 feet on planes such as the McDonnell Douglas MD-80--a safer but noisier takeoff, pilots say. The tests won’t be completed until the end of the year.

Mittermeier, meanwhile, must oversee runway improvements, parking and food concessions, the 97-person airport staff and an annual budget of nearly $98 million.

But no issue is more perplexing for Mittermeier than the thundering goodbys from departing jetliners. For example, will new FAA takeoff procedures push Newport Beach officials and homeowner groups to renew their decades-old court fight against airport noise? This would jeopardize a hard-won 1985 settlement that permitted the airport’s $310-million expansion in exchange for a limit of 8.4 million passengers a year and the county’s so-far failed search for a site to build a new, regional airport.

What if the MD-80 has trouble meeting the airport’s noise standards under the FAA’s new takeoff procedures? Would a judge rule that under the 1985 settlement, which requires that noise standards remain in place, that the MD-80 can’t fly out of John Wayne Airport? Such a ruling would affect more than a dozen flights a day.

Such issues might intimidate someone new to aviation, which even has its own language.

“At first, I thought I was on Mars,” Mittermeier recalled.

A mother of two who returned to college to earn a degree, Mittermeier joined the county auditor’s staff at age 36. She rose quickly and was transferred to the airport. She served as assistant airport manager before the Board of Supervisors promoted her to the top post shortly after the new terminal opened in 1990.

Those were trying times. Mittermeier’s predecessor, George Rebella, left under a cloud due partly to millions of dollars in cost overruns on the new passenger terminal and complaints about his management style.

But Mittermeier was a star--a talented, tightfisted administrator with a reputation for getting results. And she has delivered, say government and airline officials.

Mittermeier, who receives $94,600 a year, weathered the lean Gulf War period in which passenger traffic and airport revenue dropped. She cut expenses. And she listened to complaints about balky baggage conveyors and barely visible directional signs and ordered corrective action.

Now, passenger volumes are running more than 5% ahead of last year. Airline fare wars have filled the terminal concourses with passengers this summer, so much so that finding a seat in a waiting area can be a problem--the first time that has happened since the cavernous structure opened.

This without any increase in the number of jet departures, since the airlines are packing more people into larger planes such as the Boeing 757.

What’s more, the airport is still one of the few agencies to turn a profit, which by law must be used for airport improvements.

And while all of these things could have happened without Mittermeier, county supervisors give her credit for keeping the airport running smoothly. Riley cites a total absence of complaints about Mittermeier from airport staffers and others who work with her.

“She handles her employees well,” Riley said. “Their devotion to duty is unsurpassed. I’d probably have to give her an ‘A.’ ”

Airline officials, who once met regularly with airport people to air complaints, say they called off the meetings because there’s rarely anything to discuss.

But Mittermeier’s tenure hasn’t been without controversy.

Travelers complain incessantly about the lack of cheaper, long-term parking. The discount, $7-a-day lot across the street from the terminal fills up by midweek, they complain, leaving them to pay higher rates in the two garages that flank the terminal. Those garages cost $14 a day for the first two days and $7 a day thereafter.

Mittermeier occasionally opens a remote, discount lot on Main Street, between Red Hill Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, only when the garages are nearly full--mostly around holidays.

The public, Mittermeier said, simply has no inherent right to cheaper rates. Keeping the remote lot open continuously would cost the airport too much money and harm its ability to repay airport construction bonds, she said.

“People in Orange County simply aren’t use to paying for parking” wherever they go, she said. “They forget that before the new terminal was built, the lot in front of the old terminal was $15 a day, and it was always full. People seemed to accept it. . . . And our current prices are still lower than those at some other airports.”

In January, vendors complained about business licenses granted by the Board of Supervisors to two airport transportation firms--one owned by a former county airport commissioner and another firm which turned out to be in bankruptcy proceedings and which hired former county supervisor Ralph Clark as a lobbyist.

In each case, airport officials contend, politics or favoritism played no role. But Riley admits that in hindsight, the two license awards “may have” given the appearance of impropriety.

While protesting that she’s not equipped to be an investigative agency, Mittermeier now has her staff check more thoroughly into companies’ financial backgrounds. And, unlike some of her predecessors, she has banned employees from taking upgrades or free trips offered by airlines, small-plane owners or airport vendors.

Known as a taskmaster and perfectionist who believes in working “as many hours as it takes to get the job done,” Mittermeier has flown to Washington five times to lobby FAA officials on airport noise issues.

At first, the male-dominated FAA assumed she was a secretary and asked where her boss was. Broderick said that in hindsight, it was “probably a mistake” not to have included Mittermeier in some meetings much earlier.

But now that she has the FAA’s attention, Mittermeier still is faced with the fact that under the best of circumstances, the airport noise settlement with Newport Beach and homeowners expires in 2005.

So Mittermeier has made it her task to prepare the airport for the future. She’s persuaded the Board of Supervisors to fund a $45,000 “strategic plan” that, when finished in about eight months, will help determine what the airport will do and look like in years to come.

Among the near-term possibilities, she says, is reducing noise for Santa Ana Heights residents by moving jetliner takeoffs several hundred feet closer to the San Diego Freeway, where there is grass now, to confine more takeoff noise within airport boundaries. A feasibility study will begin soon.

“If we can’t reduce the noise,” Mittermeier said, “then we have a problem. . . . We’ll negotiate with Newport Beach and community groups. I think we’ll be able to reach some accommodation.”

Residents may have to forgo the protection they now enjoy from cargo jets, she said. UPS and Federal Express are still pressing the airport for permission to base planes here, and the two firms are working with the county’s Environmental Management Agency to try to overcome a lack of warehouse and hangar space.

Also on Mittermeier’s agenda are two lawsuits scheduled to go to court soon involving Taylor Woodrow California Construction Ltd., the firm that was fired from one of the airport garage contracts and which claims more than $28 million in unpaid bills for building the new Thomas F. Riley Terminal.

A shiny carriage clock--a gift from Taylor Woodrow--sits on a cabinet in Mittermeier’s sparsely decorated office amid scale-model airplanes and stacks of reports. “The clock doesn’t work,” she deadpans. “It never has.”

The terminal built by Taylor Woodrow performs well, however, although Mittermeier says she’s always looking for ways to improve little things, like moving taxicabs to a new spot to create more room at the curb for airport shuttle vans.

“We will always look for improvements,” says Mittermeier. “There will always be something.”

Profile: Jan Mittermeier

Title: manager, John Wayne Airport

Salary: $94,600 per year

Appointed: Sept. 25, 1990, by the Board of Supervisors

Age: 52. Born in Toleson, Ariz.

Previous Positions: Assistant airport manager; chief of audits at county auditor’s office; entry-level auditor.

Education: Bachelor of science in accounting and master of science in business administration, both from Cal State Long Beach. Certified public accountant. Certificate in executive management from UC Irvine. Attended Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach.

Family: Married to Ron Mittermeier, who owns a printing firm in Huntington Beach. Two sons, Kevin, 32, and Keith, 27.

Political Affiliation: Democrat

Source: John Wayne Airport