Pilots Union, Citing Safety Concerns, Urges S.D. Airport Relocation : Aviation: Renewed proposals that Lindbergh Field operations be shifted to naval air station have drawn criticism.
The Air Line Pilots Assn. called Monday for the closure of Lindbergh Field, saying San Diego’s downtown airport is unsafe, overcrowded and fraught with “inadequacies (that) are insurmountable.”
The statement comes at a time when the future of the airport has again become a hot local issue, dividing local residents and the business community. Some groups advocate that the airport be moved to the site of Miramar Naval Air Station. Others, including two U.S. congressmen, say the airport should stay put.
The statement from the pilots union may be designed to influence a June 7 advisory vote set by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on whether to relocate the airport to Miramar if the military vacates the site 10 miles northeast of downtown San Diego.
The ballot measure was opposed by San Diego’s mayor and City Council, who feared the vote would send the wrong message to the Navy, long a valued economic presence in San Diego and the surrounding area.
Navy spokesman Doug Sayers said Monday that the ballot measure is academic because the military has no intention of leaving the 24,000-acre Miramar site. Only a presidential order could force the military to move, he said.
The 42,000-member pilots association has previously expressed its dissatisfaction with Lindbergh Field to the Federal Aviation Administration, spokesman Bob Flocke said. The union issued the strong statement Monday because the airport “can no longer be upgraded to meet current or future air traffic demands.”
“We have realized for some time that Lindbergh has been developed all that it can be developed,” Flocke said, adding that although the length of its runway is adequate, there is little “margin for error.”
“We have problems with the terrain, the mountains around it. If any airport is ever (likely to be) fogged in, it’s Lindbergh,” Flocke said.
The pilots believe that “the concept of using Miramar Naval Air Station as a civil or joint-use facility, as San Diego organizations have advocated, has much merit and should be explored fully.”
But San Diego’s business leaders are ambivalent about moving the airport to Miramar, especially if it means irritating the military.
Howard Ruggles, the military affairs director for the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, said it should be left to the Navy to decide Miramar’s fate. San Diego Economic Development Corp. Vice President Ron Phillips said that “long-term, many people feel that Lindbergh won’t be the ultimate solution for this community.” And Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) and Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) oppose the use of the air station as a commercial airport.
Miramar, currently home of the Navy’s Top Gun fighter pilot training school, will become a Marine air station later this year and absorb many of the planes and personnel from the Tustin and El Toro Marine Corps air bases, which are being closed.
