Airlines Lose Round in LAX Fees Dispute : Aviation: Judge’s ruling would allow the banning of carriers that refuse to pay increased landing rates. An official calls it a ‘major victory’ for the city.

Los Angeles officials who want to increase revenue from Los Angeles International Airport won an important victory Monday when a federal judge cleared the way for the city to ban from LAX airlines that refuse to pay increased landing fees.

U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima declined a request by 40 airlines to guarantee their right to take off and land at the airport, even if they have not paid the fees, which were tripled last summer.

The Los Angeles Airport Commission will decide at its meeting Nov. 8 whether to act on its threat to exclude airlines that decline to pay the fees, said commission President Ted Stein.

Airlines officials would say only that they were disappointed and are not sure if they will pay the higher fees or appeal the judge’s decision.

Officials at City Hall greeted Tashima’s ruling with relish. “It’s a major victory for the city,” Stein said. “The greed of the airlines is over. The 40-year subsidy of the airlines industry is over.”

Mayor Richard Riordan called the ruling “a great victory for the people of Los Angeles and an initial step to ensuring that the airport is operated in a businesslike fashion for the benefit of Angelenos and not the airlines.”

The Airport Commission approved the higher fees in July, increasing the landing charge for an average-weight Boeing 747 from $300 to $900. The increase should bring in an additional $50 million for the airport each year.

Airport officials announced last month that carriers failing to pay the higher fees would be banned from using LAX. The airlines have filed a lawsuit challenging the landing fee hike and most have refused to pay.

Airport officials said the higher fees are needed for the city to operate the facility. The increase will allow the city to use other money--from food concessions, news stands and parking lots--to create a surplus that officials hope they can one day divert to pay for more LAPD officers. City officials said funds from those operations, in effect, have been for 40 years subsidizing airline operations at LAX.

But if the city wants to shift any airport money to City Hall to hire more police, it will require the repeal or waiver of federal laws that limit the use of airport revenues to aviation-related purposes.

The airlines have said that the higher fees will hurt the troubled airline industry and lead to higher ticket prices. They have said the charges are much more than the city needs to operate the airport and merely an excuse for diverting funds later.

Early in the afternoon hearing, Tashima had signaled that he might go even further and throw out the airlines’ challenge of the landing fees. Tashima called the industry’s chances of prevailing “slim” on some issues and “nonexistent” on others, but he agreed to allow lawyers for both sides to submit more papers before he makes a final ruling Dec. 6.

Tashima said he would not order the airport to continue to permit takeoffs and landings, in part, because the airlines had not proven that they would suffer “irreparable harm” should that happen. The judge said the airlines could pay the higher charges and file a lawsuit later to contest the fairness.

Tashima said that the whole dispute was a “novel area” to him and that he wished that Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena had issued a clearer ruling on the issue, rather than his “wishy-washy” statement of last month that did not seem to take sides.

In a three-hour hearing, the attorney representing the airlines and their trade group, the Air Transport Assn., argued that the city was prevented from limiting access to the airport because the federal government controls air transportation.

“Shutting down LAX contravenes fundamental federal policy,” attorney Ron Olson said. “It’s an in-your-face move, as the kids would say, to the federal (control) ordered by Congress.

“You can’t stop our air system across the country just because you have a squabble over fees.”

Olson said the action would also violate international agreements and could potentially cut off access, for example, to South Pacific travelers who must pass through the airport to reach their destinations.

But the city’s attorney, Harold McElhinny, said the airlines would suffer no permanent damage if they paid the fees and then challenged them later in court.

He said the city is being damaged because it has not been able to hire employees and make capital improvements at the airport without the higher landing fees.

“The airport is suffering irreparable injury and will continue to, as long as the airlines do not pay the higher fees,” McElhinny said, noting that one small carrier had gone out of business while owing the city $89,000 in fees.

He denied the airlines’ contention that the city’s intent to divert money to City Hall makes the higher fees illegal--saying that LAX money would only be diverted if such a shift is approved by the federal government.

As airline lawyers saw their position slipping away, they proposed a late compromise. Olson suggested to Tashima that the airlines pay an interim fee--amounting to an increase of about 50%, instead of the city-impose 300%--while the courts hashed out the legality of the increase.

Tashima was unmoved.

He ignored that request and the airlines’ demand to guarantee their right to take off and land at LAX.