Airport Proposal for Point Mugu Faces Obstacles : Aviation: Despite business leaders’ visions of commercial jets serving a regional facility, the county may not offer enough passengers to lure big carriers.

If they build the field, will the airlines come?

“That’s the question,” said Adm. William Newman, who surprised local officials last week by offering to open the runway at Point Mugu Naval Air Station to commercial airlines if Ventura County would build a terminal next door.

“If the county can’t get someone in here,” the admiral said, “this whole issue will go up in smoke.”

After insisting for 20 years that commercial and military flights were incompatible at Point Mugu, the U.S. Navy announced Wednesday that it would share its world-class, 11,000-foot-long runway with commercial jets as a cost-sharing measure.

Local business leaders immediately hailed the Navy’s offer as a historic move that could eventually connect this county directly to business and government centers such as Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco and Sacramento. No other county airport can accommodate jet airliners.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, predicted a crush of unwanted airport-spawned growth on nearby farmland.

But as the impact of the Navy’s announcement subsided, even some backers of the plan acknowledged the hurdles a new airport would have to scale. The first and biggest problem may be getting airlines to come here at all--at least in the short run.

Although planners say new airports will eventually be needed as the region’s airfields reach capacity, prospects for a new airport now appear less promising.

“We’re very definitely excited about the opportunity,” said Mary Travis, program manager at the Ventura County Transportation Commission. “But what we would have to explore in a lot more detail is whether we have the demand in Ventura County that would bring in the airlines.”

Nona Makinson, operations manager for the county Department of Airports, said that “it is a real unknown right now” whether airlines will agree to serve a new Ventura County airport even though she thinks there are plenty of passengers to warrant the service.

“Just talking, I would say there is a possibility of getting Southwest (Airlines) in here,” she said.

But spokesmen for Southwest--and for American West, which was interested in expanding into the Ventura market in 1991--said in interviews that they would not want to fly out of the Point Mugu airport.

Southwest serves only airports near the downtowns of large cities, and America West is in bankruptcy and cutting flights, not adding them, spokesmen said.

In fact, many airline and airport representatives said last week that, regardless of Point Mugu’s long-term potential, Ventura County could hardly have found a worse time to start a new airport.

The nation’s airlines have lost $10 billion since 1990 and laid off thousands of employees. Southwest Airlines was the only sizable carrier in the United States to make a profit in 1992.

“I think it’s a very tough sell, right now. Carriers are very choosy about where they initiate new service,” said Victor Gill, spokesman at the Burbank Airport, where daily flights fell from an average of 73 in 1990 to 69 in 1992.

“And in a sense, the airlines would be competing against themselves,” Gill said. “Why should they lure their Thousand Oaks passengers away from LAX or Burbank when they’re already getting them there?”

The same is true for airlines serving the thriving Santa Barbara Airport--United, American, Skywest, U.S. Air Express, United Express and American Eagle, Gill said.

American Eagle--a shuttle airline based in Texas--is the only airline now flying out of Ventura County, scheduling seven turbo-prop commuter flights a day from Oxnard Airport to LAX, with connections at Los Angeles to flights elsewhere.

Spokesman Ed Martelle said American Eagle would consider moving its current service to Point Mugu. But he said providing flights to cities outside the Los Angeles basin is another question.

“We’ve seen this a lot around the country,” Martelle said. “People have this ‘Field of Dreams’ kind of idea. They build these immense facilities, and think we’ll come. But we won’t fly where there aren’t passengers.”

If Ventura County’s newly proposed airport were to be successful, Martelle said, the county would have to sell it aggressively.

“A lot of it comes down to the initial push,” he said. “The trick is to convince the majors--like United and American--that they’ve got to take this leap of faith.”

But among the biggest boosters of the Point Mugu airport, there are few doubts that it’s an idea whose time has come.

“I know the airlines will come,” said Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn, a longtime airport commissioner. “Anyone who’s unsure isn’t living with any optimism.”

Flynn--one of several county and business leaders who discussed the airport proposal with Newman last week--said any airline doubts about the potential of Point Mugu will fade with the recession, and as President Clinton helps the industry recover from its temporary malaise.

“I don’t even think it’s going to be difficult,” Flynn said. “It’s going to start slow with the same kind of service we have now and evolve. It’s never going to be an international airport, but ultimately we will have flights to San Francisco, Sacramento, Reno, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Denver.”

A big plus that should not be underestimated, Flynn said, is the potential of Point Mugu to serve cargo airlines as well, especially in conjunction with the expanding deep-sea harbor at nearby Port Hueneme.

Flynn said a temporary terminal, perhaps under lease from the Air National Guard adjacent to Mugu, could be in operation by March, 1994, if county officials seize this opportunity.

County Airport Administrator Marshall MacKinen estimated that a permanent 25,000-square-foot airport terminal could be built within two years on 50 to 100 acres for about $2 million. And the county could apply for Federal Aviation Administration grants that would pay all but $200,000 of that, he said.

MacKinen said the county should not be deterred by the airlines’ early reluctance about Point Mugu.

“My experience has been that airlines don’t commit until they see the proposals,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect them to commit without seeing our game plan. But once we lay it all out and bring the FAA into this, we’ll have a salable package.”

History does not necessarily support MacKinen’s assertion, although a study by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, a regional planning agency, indicates there are enough local passengers to sustain air service in Ventura County.

A 1991 study by SCAG estimated that 1.6 million Ventura County passengers use Los Angeles International and Burbank airports each year, with 85% going to LAX. The study, which used 1987 figures, projected 2 million county passengers by the turn of the century and 2.5 million by the year 2010.

An unknown number of county passengers--perhaps 100,000, according to MacKinen--also fly out of Santa Barbara each year.

“There definitely is a demand,” said the airport department’s Makinson.

She noted that even Oxnard Airport--despite its ban on jets because of nearby houses--had 46,275 passengers in 1990 before the recession took its toll on air carriers and cut ridership in half. At the time, three airlines ran 20 flights a day.

Business passengers flocked to three San Francisco flights, she said, until the airline switched to a 19-passenger plane and travelers could not spread out their briefcases.

As Point Mugu airport backers see it, that demand should eventually translate into a bustling airport similar to the one in Santa Barbara.

That small airport handles 70 flights a day and 600,000 passengers a year, with jetliner flights to San Francisco, Denver and Dallas and turboprop service to communities such as Sacramento, Las Vegas and San Diego.

“We’l have a Santa Barbara-type facility,” said Richard L. Fausset, owner of a Ventura real estate syndication firm who has long pushed the idea of a larger airport. “I hope we’ll have service to Dallas. I’m there every two weeks on business. When the admiral was telling us about this, I thought, ‘Oh God, it’s just wonderful.’ I was pinching myself.”

Fausset said jet service to major cities would help lure tourists and conventions to Ventura County and persuade company owners to relocate here, bringing jobs that could ease the local recession.

In recent years, when Fausset leased office space in local business parks, the lack of airline service chilled many deals, he said.

“It would always come up as a significant point, especially with high-tech companies,” he said. “They didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t get in and out of here. Nobody wants to subject themselves to inconvenience if they don’t have to.”

But while business executives are enthusiastic about a Point Mugu airport, aviation industry analysts said Santa Barbara has advantages the Ventura County facility would not enjoy.

Santa Barbara Airport is far enough from Los Angeles that it does not have to compete with metropolitan airports, allowing airlines there to charge premium ticket prices.

Conversely, flights out of Ventura County would have to be priced close to those at Burbank and LAX, said Michael Armstrong, an aviation planner for the regional governments agency.

“Even though access would be substantially better to Point Mugu, if flights were too expensive people would just drive to Burbank or LAX,” Armstrong said.

Analysts said passengers are drawn to airports by three factors: price, frequency of flights and how close the facility is to home or work. Point Mugu would likely outstrip its competitors only in proximity.

“Cost is always No. 1,” said Martelle of American Eagle. “No. 2 is what time can I fly, and proximity is third.”

Gill said frequency of flights is the most important factor at Burbank Airport. While Burbank carriers had 3.7 million passengers last year, millions more who live nearby in the San Fernando Valley flocked to LAX because of convenient flight schedules, he said.

Some Ventura County businessmen echoed such comments.

Neil A. Moyer, chairman of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County and a frequent flyer out of Burbank Airport, said he would welcome the convenience of Point Mugu. But he said he doesn’t think the airport makes economic sense.

“I’m a realist,” he said. “We have airlines hanging on by their fingernails, and I just can’t see the airline industry being so bold, if not stupid, to take a chance on development in Ventura County.”

As things are, Ventura resident Moyer said it takes him only an hour to drive to Burbank for a morning commuter flight by cutting through Santa Clarita and down the Golden State Freeway. Most Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks residents also might opt for Burbank’s low prices, schedules and relative convenience, he said.

Many of those who are pessimistic about short-term prospects of a Point Mugu commercial field, however, concede that one may make sense in the future as gridlock overtakes the Los Angeles airports.

Los Angeles-area airports already are near capacity with 60 million passengers a year, and SCAG estimates that the region will produce 93 million passengers by the year 2000. That leaves tens of millions of passengers with no place to go except perhaps to new airports such as the one proposed at Point Mugu.

“We would strongly support a commercial airport in Ventura County if one cold be developed to fit into that community,” said Jack Graham, chief planner for Los Angeles’ four airfields, including LAX.

“This whole basin is already overcrowded,” he said. “Certainly an airport up there would be very helpful to us. The more commercial airports we can get, the better.”

The FAA would almost certainly agree, since it considers the Los Angeles area one of the most overtaxed in the nation, behind New York and Chicago. It has gone to court to force Long Beach and Orange County airports to accept more flights.

That’s one reason Point Mugu airport supporters said they are counting on FAA financial support when Ventura County takes its airport proposal to the federal government.

“It’s a bad time to talk about new commercial airports anywhere in the United States,” Flynn said. “I know that. Times are difficult right now. But they are not always going to be difficult.”

If Ventura County builds at Point Mugu, he said, the airlines will come.