Point Mugu Runway Plan May Lure Visitors, Report Says : Finances: The news surprises military officials. The Navy has offered to share its facility with airlines and cargo carriers.

Aviation analysts said Wednesday that development of commercial airline or cargo service out of Point Mugu Naval Air Station could annually attract nearly half a million members of the Ventura County traveling public.

News that the proposal could attract so many travelers surprised Navy officials and even the analysts themselves, according to Tim Merwin, head aviation analyst for the Southern California Assn. of Governments--the group hired to conduct a feasibility study on the joint-use proposal.

The Navy has offered to share its runway with commercial airlines and cargo carriers as a way of defraying operating costs at the base.

Merwin said that based on SCAG research, the Point Mugu site would be roughly comparable to Palm Springs Regional Airport in numbers of passenger trips and numbers of airlines. That Riverside County-based facility is now home to 17 airlines, which flew more than 400,000 round-trip passengers to the site during 1993.

“After we digested the data, we were impressed with the chances of success for this proposal,” Merwin said.

Further projections, he said, placed the number of possible one-way travelers out of Point Mugu at nearly 2 million annually by the year 2010, if current passenger and flight restrictions remain at other regional airports that would compete with the site’s operation.

Merwin presented the information during a meeting of the Point Mugu Airfield Joint-Use Investigative Committeeat Camarillo Airport.

According to Alan Alpers, a Navy spokesman, the projections supported the Navy’s contention that a commercial airline service at the base had merit.

“I think today’s numbers, while still preliminary, would indicate that there’s interest out there to make this happen,” Alpers said. “I think it reinforces that our idea to come forth and float this proposal was a worthwhile endeavor.”

But according to Charlotte Craven, an executive officer on the Point Mugu Airfield Investigative Committee and a member of the Camarillo City Council, the preliminary SCAG reports lacked a critical sense of whether airline or air freight cargo operations would be interested in coming to Point Mugu.

“It seems to me that if we don’t have that kind of information, we really can’t make a decision,” Craven said. “It seems that once again, we’re being rushed on this and that we have the cart before the horse.”

Craven added that without the additional information, the committee could waste more money on studies only to find no airline or cargo service is interested.

“We could be looking at spending millions on a full environmental impact report on this thing before we discover that no one wants to come here,” Craven said. “And I don’t care if it’s not our money or the county’s money or the FAA’s money--it would still be a horrible waste.”

Merwin, however, defended the process saying that the SCAG feasibility report--funded by a $150,000 Federal Aviation Administration grant--needed to profile the traveling public market first before determining industry interest.

“Our experience with the airlines is that if you don’t have a complete and detailed profile of the market ready when you sit down with them, they won’t be interested--even if you had the greatest place in the world for a new airport,” Merwin said.

Information on airline interest is expected to be contained in Phase II of the SCAG study, which is due to be released this summer. Phase I, which will contain research on passenger and cargo demand, airport operations, facilities and noise and air quality impacts from the project, is due to be released June 1.

During the meeting, Merwin and Mike Armstrong, another SCAG analyst, presented preliminary information to the committee showing that if Point Mugu was converted for partial civilian use, local agricultural operations would use the facility to move their crops. Armstrong said that as many as 11 planeloads of cargo--each weighing 27 tons per plane--could fly out of Point Mugu by the year 2010.

Merwin said the impact of additional flights over noise-sensitive Camarillo--which sits almost directly underneath the base’s main flight path--would not be as great as initially thought. He said the majority of commercial flights would approach the base from the ocean, but on bad weather days more flights would pass over the city.

He added that current commuter turboprop service from Oxnard Airport to Los Angeles International Airport--about seven round-trips daily--would be relocated to new facilities at Point Mugu.

The idea to open Point Mugu to civilian use was presented by Navy officials one year ago as a way of cutting maintenance costs of the 11,000-foot runway. Navy officials made the offer because a steady decline in number of military flights left them with a glut of unused flight time.

Military operations at the base fell from more than 70,000 annually in 1989 and 1990 to fewer than 59,000 in 1992, after the departure of a handful of squadrons and an overall reduction in weapons testing there.