SkyWest Plans to Pull Out of Palmdale : Transportation: The airline cites ‘inconsistent profitability’ and ‘new competition.’ Only one carrier will be left at the airport.

SkyWest Airlines will stop service out of Palmdale Regional Airport at the end of February, leaving just one airline at the little-used facility.

The announcement is the latest setback in the decades-old dream that Palmdale become home to an international airport. The city of Los Angeles in the late 1960s purchased nearly 18,000 acres in Palmdale for what the Department of Airports envisioned as an intercontinental airport.

In 1971, the city opened a small terminal on land leased from Air Force Plant 42 and over the next several years a succession of mostly small airlines came and went. From the mid-1980s until January, 1990, when America West Airlines began flights from Palmdale, the airport was actually without any air service. America West left less than two years later, saying it was losing money.

Utah-based SkyWest, which serves as a Delta connection, began service from Palmdale in June, 1990. The decision to end operations here, according to a company statement, “follows three years of inconsistent profitability and the recent entry of new competition at the Palmdale Regional Airport.”

New Mexico-based Mesa Airlines, operating at the Palmdale Airport as United Express, 10 months ago joined SkyWest in offering commercial airline service to residents of this north Los Angeles County region.

Brandon Eaton, United Express Palmdale station manager, said the airline has seen its passenger load increase every month except November since it began service in Palmdale. The departure of SkyWest, he said, should provide his company with even more customers.

SkyWest spokeswoman Annette Mikat said SkyWest lost nearly $1 million in Palmdale, where it offers six flights daily to Los Angeles and one to Palm Springs.

The 19-seat planes that SkyWest flies in and out of Palmdale, Mikat said, this year have averaged about 30% full, well below the 49.9% the company averaged in November in all its markets.

Mikat said SkyWest thought that once it began operating, word of mouth would result in increased business in Palmdale. That never happened.

Rick Norris, a member of the Palmdale Regional Airport Advisory Council, said he was “terribly disappointed” to learn that SkyWest is departing from Palmdale.

He believes that the airline failed to match its services with the needs of Antelope Valley residents. “We showed SkyWest where the community wants to go and they insist on flying them to Los Angeles.”

A survey by the advisory council of civic and business leaders who frequently fly, Norris said, showed a desire for flights to Sacramento and San Francisco.

Mikat said the airline’s main objective is to offer a connector flight to Los Angeles International Airport for people who are then going to fly Delta to another destination.

“We’re telling them how to answer the needs of the community and they haven’t been able to do it,” Norris said of SkyWest. “United Express is trying to listen to the community.”