Price of Parking Convenience at John Wayne Airport: $20

Until Wednesday, business had been miserable for the new valet service at John Wayne Airport, with a scant four or five drivers a day opting to leave their car keys with the curbside attendants in maroon vests.

But business began to pick up Wednesday, the day airport officials chose to formally start their valet service with a celebration. By midmorning, 28 vehicles had been dropped off by drivers who paid nearly double the standard rate for the convenience of having their vehicle parked for them rather than poking around for a spot in the congested airport parking lots.

Most drivers--some who said the quest to find a parking space had left them with headaches or put them in foul moods--said they would gladly pay $20 a day to drop off their vehicle in front of the terminal and have someone else park it. One woman in a Lexus SUV looked to the sky, sighed deeply and thanked “heaven above” for the service as a valet took her keys.

“People are so happy about it because, well, who wants to be early to the airport? You sit around. This way they can show up with five minutes to spare instead of 30 or 40 to find a parking spot on their own,” said Mike Edinger, a 22-year-old valet.

John Wayne is among a dozen airports that have started valet service as a way of combating a shortage of parking. Burbank airport has been offering the service for 11 years.

Shannon Ingraham, 30, of Costa Mesa dropped off her Toyota SUV Wednesday before rushing to catch a flight to New York. She said she had left her office with hopes of being early, but after looking for a parking spot for almost 30 minutes, she was running late.

She stepped out of her SUV, saying, “So convenient! Thank you so much.”

“You only have so much time,” she said. “It takes a lot for me to give it up. I think with the valet, it just gives me a little bit more. Plus, traveling is so stressful . . . you have so many things to worry about. You don’t want to have to worry about your car.”

Chris Whitaker, 38, paid $20 just for the convenience of dropping somebody off Wednesday. “I don’t think I would pay that for one hour again, but I would if I were going on a trip; $20 for a hour is just too much.”

The valet rate is by far the highest at the airport. The rate at the regular terminal lot is $11 a day. The long-term lots cost $7 a day, but passengers must catch an airport shuttle to reach the terminal.

While John Wayne will experiment with the valet service for a year before declaring it a success or failure, the service has helped Burbank deal with its parking crunch and has been an apparent crowd-pleaser as well.

“It is an incredible profit center for us,” said Victor Gill, spokesman for the Burbank airport. “It started off with about 300 cars a day until the mid-’90s. Now we have about 1,000 cars a day at the valet.”

Yolanda Perez, a spokeswoman for John Wayne Airport, said the valet service will be deemed a success if it attracts about 350 vehicles a day.

John Wayne officials said they decided to offer the curbside service--located between the airport’s two terminals--mostly to assist business travelers who make up about 60% of the airport’s customers.

The service “adds a touch of sophistication for the traveler,” Perez said. To that end, when travelers retrieve their vehicles, valets radio ahead to have the cars properly prepped--radios are turned on and, if the weather is warm, the air-conditioning adjusted.