High Time for Airports : Without Bigger Facilities, Region Risks Losing Trade to Other Areas

Will Southern California be able to cope with prosperity? That’s the curious question as the region, which has survived the longest recession in its history, faces an era of growth and opportunity in aviation.

International passenger and freight traffic to Southern California is accelerating, challenging the region to expand airports or build new ones.

The resources are available. Southern California has more former military bases ready for conversion to civilian use than most areas. If human wisdom prevails, air traffic can be allocated across the region with benefits for all. As always, that’s a big if.

Growth is impressive. According to projections in its new master plan, Los Angeles International Airport will go from 54 million passengers a year to 98 million 20 years from now. Freight tonnage will more than double, from 1.7 million tons to 4.2 million.

Orange County traffic is growing even faster--including passengers and freight the county feeds to LAX and Ontario airports, because John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa is at its legal capacity of only 8.4 million passengers a year. There is no other major airport in Orange or San Diego counties to meet expanding demand from Asia and Latin America and local business.

If we were talking about anything but airports, a building boom would already be underway. But airports arouse opposition from all sorts of people, and political leaders speak of them carefully.

“If we want to attain all the capacity for the projected traffic, LAX will need two additional runways,” says Dan Garcia, head of the Los Angeles Airport Commission. “One of them may be out in the water”--meaning a runway built into Santa Monica Bay.

In Orange County, where surrounding communities limit John Wayne Airport to operating at half its capacity, residents put a measure on the March 26 California primary ballot opposing an international airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which the military is closing in 1999.

The current initiative attempts to reverse the approval Orange County voters gave to an international airport at El Toro in a November 1994 ballot. Opponents claim an airport there will cause congestion, noise and a decline in property values.

But the real issue is “not in my backyard.” Orange County needs an international airport to serve its diversified economy, which now earns $10 billion a year--one-eighth of the county’s total output of goods and services--from global business.

The county’s lack of a major airport is already causing congestion on freeways leading to LAX and Ontario and at those airports, especially at LAX, where commuter flights take up 20% of the operating capacity but contribute only 4% of the passengers.

Such inefficiencies are about to come under fire. Pushed by rapid growth in international traffic, LAX is scrambling to accommodate current business. The airport is opening a new international facility at the United terminal and rejiggering other areas to maximize utilization. It will have to make some changes, Garcia explains, because new federal regulations decree greater distance between airplanes on the ground.

LAX, the fifth-busiest airport in the world, has half the runway space of Chicago’s O’Hare or London’s Heathrow--which it most resembles as a point of origin and termination of global flights.

LAX needs more but can expect a long, hard fight over its expansion plans, now being aired in public hearings that began last month. One possibility might be to add a runway for commuter flights north of the airport, pushing into Playa del Rey. Another might be to lengthen runways to the west of Pershing Avenue, pushing up against the beach.

And aside from air space, there are issues of ground congestion to be resolved. “We want LAX to grow intelligently, but with the neighboring communities brought into the master-planning process,” says Harvey Holden, airport expert for El Segundo’s city government.

Holden and El Segundo know that airports are good business. “LAX already accounts for $37 billion in economic activity and 400,000 jobs,” says professor Steven Erie of UC San Diego, an expert in regional infrastructure. And Los Angeles’ city government sees expanded concessions at LAX contributing to city revenue.

Also, airports around the world have been shown to increase property values, says professor Louis Massadi of UC Irvine.

Other cities know all this. Phoenix and Las Vegas are advertising their international airports as candidates for business if Southern California fails to get its act together. They reckon that the new 777s and 747-400s can fly nonstop from Asia and that passengers and cargo can be transported back to California.

But their ambitions only underscore this region’s importance.

Fortunately, Southern California has many arrows in its quiver. Ontario Airport is getting a new terminal right now and may be expanded further.

Palmdale, as a regional airport, and Burbank, with a new terminal, can serve the San Fernando Valley and northern areas.

March Air Force Base in Riverside and Point Mugu Naval Weapons Center in Ventura County can both be converted to cargo airports, alleviating some of the crush on LAX, says Michael Armstrong, senior aviation planner for the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

And an airport at El Toro, if approved on the March 26 ballot, could be operating by 2005, complementing LAX and giving the region an airport complex suited to its global economic importance.

The aviation pioneers who helped build Southern California would have jumped at today’s opportunities. Does their daring and vision survive?

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Lofty Prospects

Cargo tonnage ferried through Los Angeles International Airport will more than double by 2015 and passenger traffic will come close, according to projections contained in the Los Angeles Department of Airports’ master plan. A look at growth and projections for cargo and passenger loads at the airport:

Air cargo, in millions of tons (incl. air mail):

2015: 4.2

Number of passengers, in millions:

2015: 97.9%

Note: Data for years 2000-2015 are projections.

Source: Los Angeles Department of Airports