Debate Centers on How San Diego Airport Can Spread Out Its Wings

Even before the 1978 midair collision of a Pacific Southwest Airlines jet and a small private plane killed 144 people, San Diego’s cramped downtown airport, Lindbergh Field, had been denounced by the Air Line Pilots Assn. as an accident waiting to happen.

Just last week, the 42,000-member pilots group intensified the decades-old debate over what to do about the airport by calling it unsafe, overcrowded and fraught with “inadequacies (that) are insurmountable.”

The pilots’ announcement was apparently calculated to influence a June 7 advisory vote in which San Diego County voters will be asked the following question:

“If the U.S. government decides to make (Miramar Naval Air Station) available for civilian airport use, then should all government officials cooperate to make every effort to relocate San Diego International Airport (Lindbergh Field) to Miramar?”

Lindbergh Field was dedicated in August, 1928, and the first twin-engine jet took off in 1947. The Lindbergh-versus-Miramar argument has been raging since the 1950s, when turbojet aircraft became popular. The field was never intended to accommodate such large planes.

Although not everyone agrees with the pilots, even those who favor keeping the airport at Lindbergh concede its flaws.

The contrast between the two airfields is striking. Lindbergh offers a single runway, sandwiched in between tall buildings, homes, freeways and commercial establishments, on a cluttered complex of 472 acres.

Miramar--the largest naval air station in the world--sprawls across 24,000 acres in the largely undeveloped northeast corridor of the city, near Interstate 15. It has three runways, of 12,000, 8,000 and 6,000 feet. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has designated it an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.

Miramar is by no means the only alternative. Those who favor a new airport have proposed putting one near the international border and sharing it with Mexico--but neither the Mexicans nor homeowners were very fond of the idea.

Other proposals have included a floating barge airport off the Pacific coast and a desert airport accessed by high-speed rail--ideas almost immediately discounted because of what critics say would be astronomical costs. Inevitably, the talk comes back to relocating to Miramar or expanding Lindbergh.

An almost forgotten component in the argument is the military, which last week reiterated its position of never relinquishing Miramar. “There ain’t no window of opportunity, and it ain’t open,” Miramar spokesman Doug Sayers said.

But many did sense an opportunity when the 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission announced its decision to convert Miramar from a Navy airfield, famous for its Top Gun fighter pilot training school, to one used exclusively by the Marine Corps.

Marine Corps Air Station Miramar will house primarily helicopters and a small fleet of fixed-wing aircraft, such as the F-18. Military authorities chose to shut down Marine operations at Tustin and El Toro in Orange County and move them to Miramar, sending its fleet of F-14s to Fresno and its elite Top Gun school to Nevada.

“The facts are out there, and the position of government has not changed,” Sayers said. “This is a much larger issue than just San Diego. We’re talking national defense here.”

But that has not deterred proponents of a civilian airfield. The group known as Citizens for Miramar notes that the Navy will have vacated Miramar by 1996 and that it will cost nearly $1.7 billion to relocate the Marines to Miramar. Miramar was long ago listed as the preferred airport site in the city’s master plan, they say, and a new airport at Miramar would generate 50,000 new jobs.

Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) and Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) favor keeping the military at Miramar. Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego) has yet to take a position. Rep. Lynn Schenk (D-San Diego) and Mayor Susan Golding have sounded grim warnings about offending the military, long a vital cog of the region’s economy.

But in a city fond of calling itself “America’s Finest,” no one believes that Lindbergh Field comes remotely close to sharing the billing.

Bob Flocke, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Assn., said the surrounding terrain, traffic patterns in and around the airport, frequent fog and the intimidating presence of a six-story building close to the runway make Lindbergh one of the toughest places in the world to land.

The 1978 PSA crash--at that time, the worst air disaster in the nation’s history--had more to do with an obsolete air traffic warning system that failed to detect the smaller plane. The system has since been upgraded, Flocke said.

“At Lindbergh, it’s no longer the near-miss we worry about. It’s the near-hit,” he said, referring to the Laurel Travel Center, the building pilots say descending planes come uncomfortably close to as they touch down.

In the mid-1980s, the owner of the travel center obtained permission from the city and the Federal Aviation Administration to build it--a decision bitterly opposed by the San Diego Unified Port District, which operates Lindbergh Field.

Port authorities have since launched plans to improve Lindbergh, which they say is necessary with or without a move to Miramar.

Their Airport Ad Hoc Committee recently voted to recommend spending $57 million for roadway improvements, such as double-decking the arrival and departure lanes near the airport entrance in a design modeled after the San Francisco airport. Those changes would come on top of $71 million allocated for expanding its West Terminal from 11 passenger gates to 19; enlarging and relocating its outdated fuel facility, and widening access roads.

Lindbergh, considered by even its staunchest advocates to be too small to accommodate the future aviation needs of the nation’s sixth-largest city, has seen its annual passenger load double in the past decade to 12 million.

But slow-growth advocates who fear the cost of a new airport say removing the Laurel Travel Center and expanding Lindbergh would be the most reasonable alternative. They add that the impending closure of the adjacent Naval Training Center makes expansion more feasible.

In recent weeks, the bid for Miramar, led by developer Doug Manchester, has won the backing of the San Diego Union-Tribune, and its publisher, Helen Copley. Its editorials have cited growing concerns over the noise generated by Marine helicopters at Miramar, even quoting a study that claims the noise from newer Stage-3 commercial aircraft would be far more preferable.

For years, pro-Miramar forces faced opposition from the posh communities of La Jolla and Del Mar, over whose neighborhoods commercial jets would be taking off if Miramar became an international airport.

But Copley, one of the city’s most powerful business people and a longtime La Jolla resident, recently gave $50,000 to Manchester’s group.

Dan Pegg, president of the San Diego Economic Development Corp., said the glaring omission in the airport debate is that no study has examined the long-term economic benefits of a new airport or the cost of converting Miramar from military to civilian use.

Two are now under way, by the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce and the San Diego Assn. of Governments.