Not-My-Airport Syndrome

Each year, 12 million of the 68 million air passengers flying into Los Angeles International Airport pick up their luggage and start traveling again--to Orange County.

By arguing for a new airport at El Toro, Orange County’s elected officials ostensibly are looking to make this number go down, not up. But the three supervisors who favor the airport seem ready to gamble with the problem by prematurely adjusting the cap on the number of passengers allowed at John Wayne Airport. This could prevent further expansion of airport capacity in Orange County, along with any regional solution to growth in passenger and cargo traffic.

Orange County’s contribution to regional aviation needs is part of a contentious eight-year debate over the future of the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. What the county should have done years ago was conduct a forthright conversation over what it needed to do and how. Because it didn’t, battle lines have hardened.

There probably are ways for a modest airport at El Toro to work in tandem with John Wayne, giving both the county and the region some new aviation capacity. But parochial interests have prevailed on both sides of the El Toro debate, and now Orange County voters are on track to approve a proposal next spring to turn El Toro into a huge park. The measure has fared well in early polling because the alternative is a county-designed airport that even key supporters think is much too big and that few aviation experts believe could operate as advertised. A recent survey by Chapman University found strong support for the park, suggesting it will take a remarkable change of heart for the airport to prevail next March.

It is entirely possible that John Wayne Airport could be left by default as Orange County’s answer to Southern California’s future air traffic needs. Newport Beach, which for years has lived with overflights from John Wayne, has nervously hoped that El Toro will win approval before court-approved caps on flights and passengers expire in 2005. The three supervisors who support the El Toro plan seem only too willing to roll the dice on Newport’s behalf. Board Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad has proposed limiting John Wayne’s growth--from its current cap of 8.4 million passengers--to 9.8 million by 2016, an increase of just 1.4 million passengers.

Not only is it unwise to potentially limit Orange County’s aviation capacity so narrowly, there are no guarantees that the federal government will allow whatever limits the supervisors wish for John Wayne.

There is capacity now at John Wayne to handle significantly more passengers than the supervisors say they want. They have to protect Newport Beach, but they also should have a contingency plan to handle future demand in case the El Toro airport proposals don’t fly.