Airfield Investigative Panel Holds Last Meeting : Point Mugu: The committee on joint use of the Navy facility gives way to a new governing body.

After 20 meetings that stretched over nearly two years, the Point Mugu Airfield Investigative Committee met for the last time Thursday, acknowledging a consultant’s report declaring that joint military and civilian use of the Navy airfield would attract limited commuter service.

The committee, which has met since April, 1993, gives way to a newly created governing body charged with overseeing the environmental impact and land-use studies needed before an airport could fly.

The Point Mugu Regional Airport Joint Powers Authority --composed of representatives from Ventura County and the cities of Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Thousand Oaks--would also govern the day-to-day operations of the airport, if developed. The authority awaits final approval from the cities, which must vote on a change the county dictated in the bylaws.

Though the city of Camarillo voted earlier this month not to join the governing authority, City Councilwoman Charlotte Craven used Thursday night’s meeting as another chance to iterate her city’s opposition to the plan.

“This whole plan is seriously flawed,” Craven said earlier Thursday. “If this airport is developed, the whole reason why people moved to the county will be dashed. It will ruin our environment, and it will clog our roadways. And, from everything I can see, it’s not going to fly economically.”

The Camarillo council went on record last year opposing the airport plans because of safety, noise and air pollution concerns.

William Dunkle, a retired airline executive from Camarillo, raised another concern: economic viability. He warned the committee that the fares at Point Mugu would be substantially higher than at larger airports, prompting customers to travel to Burbank or Los Angeles.

“Point Mugu will never, ever be anything more than a short-haul airport,” Dunkle said. “And even that appears to me to be marginal.”

But analysts from the Southern California Assn. of Governments defended the airport project.

“We believe this will work,” said Mike Armstrong, SCAG’s senior aviation analyst. “The key to this is minimizing the risk and starting as small as possible and keeping costs low.” Armstrong said he thought that both computer and small cargo delivery operations would be the first tenants.

The marketing study, prepared for SCAG by an Ohio-based consulting firm, states that the airport, if developed, could be used by 500,000 to 1 million passengers annually by 2010.

The report also indicates that airlines such as United, Delta, America West and Alaska could be among the carriers lured to the facility to provide either feeder service to Los Angeles International Airport or limited short-haul service to destinations within 500 miles of Point Mugu.

“Has anyone asked the airlines?” Don Hollingsworth, a Camarillo resident, asked the committee. “It will all be irrelevant if none of the airlines will agree to come here.”

The report’s authors concede that none of the airlines were contacted directly, but the companies nevertheless meet the likely economic profile of airlines that could be persuaded to set up operations at Point Mugu.

However, a 1993 survey conducted by The Times of airlines now serving Southern California showed little or no interest in moving to Point Mugu. And recently, officials of the Airline Transport Assn., a lobbying group and clearinghouse, said that for now its member airlines were unlikely to consider moving to Point Mugu, given the continued economic downturn that has plagued the industry.

During the meeting, the committee was also presented with the results of SCAG’s Phase II feasibility study, which indicated there were no “fatal flaws” to the Point Mugu airport plan.

Prepared under the direction of Tim Merwin, SCAG’s chief aviation analyst, the Phase II study shows that the joint-use plan would cause no significant environmental damage to the Point Mugu area and could create thousands of new jobs.