L.A. Pins Its Airport Hopes on Palmdale

Thirty-one years after hundreds of people crowded into the Palmdale Airport terminal to watch Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty dedicate the facility, a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and secured with a heavy brass padlock guards the entrance.

Despite the lofty visions on that muggy June dedication day of Palmdale as a bustling regional airfield, a notion revived recently by Mayor James K. Hahn, that was the last time the building would host so many patrons at once.

These days, four years after Palmdale’s last flight, tumbleweeds bounce along the cracked asphalt ramp. A coyote lopes down the deserted access road past rusting farm machinery. An inch of dust lines empty ticket counters.

The airport’s lone employee, Brandon Eaton, says many people have forgotten the facility exists.

“Even people who live up here don’t realize that there’s a terminal tucked away down here,” the superintendent of operations said during a recent tour. “I’m standing here today with a facility capable of handling 300,000 people. I have a parking lot with 360 spaces.”

Los Angeles officials are acutely aware of the empty airport’s presence, and hope to base commercial air service there again soon. Hahn has made the aging facility a centerpiece for his plan to redistribute air traffic around Southern California.

Sharing the load among the region’s six airports is crucial if Hahn is to enforce a cap of 78 million passengers at Los Angeles International Airport. He has proposed the cap as part of his $9.6-billion modernization proposal there.

To meet the limit, the mayor must persuade airlines to move commuter service to airports such as Palmdale, which could accommodate as many as 4 million travelers by 2025, according a forecast by the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

That figure compares with the 48,500 travelers who flew into or out of Palmdale in its peak year, 1990. The number dwindled to fewer than 19,400 -- an average of 53 a day -- by 1997. The last carrier pulled out in 1998, citing lack of interest in its service.

Serious planning to return service to Palmdale began under Mayor Richard Riordan, when Palmdale officials and the Los Angeles agency that operates the airport hired a consultant to study its potential. The study found that the region could support air service at Palmdale and officials were poised to present the findings to several airlines -- on Sept. 10, 2001.

Given Hahn’s goal, officials are again urging carriers to provide service at Palmdale. They have approached a few since August, said Bob Haueter, a senior deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose district includes the airport.

“The timing really couldn’t be better,” Haueter said. “Some airlines expressed an interest in providing service, even after 9/11. We’re going to follow up with those.”

Major Obstacles

Among the hurdles that must be overcome to bring this dusty desert outpost to life is the reluctance of the airlines, still reeling from a poor economy and the terrorist attacks, to expand service to markets near major airports.

In addition, the airport’s growth is limited by a lease agreement with the Air Force, which owns the runways, and by various environmental issues that could stymie expansion plans. Also, it’s difficult get there from Los Angeles.

But Palmdale officials aren’t discouraged. They say the community has grown more affluent, and its educated, well-heeled population could support flights to communities as far flung as Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Sacramento and San Francisco.

“We’re not trying to replace LAX,” said David Meyers, president of the Greater Valley Economic Alliance, a nonprofit promotional group. “There are very few areas in the country like this that don’t have an airport. Markets similar in size to ours supported airline service with far fewer people with less buying power and businesses.”

About 625,000 residents live in the airport’s “catchment area,” which Meyers said includes parts of the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys and Inyo and San Bernardino counties. Several areas with strong regional airports are smaller, such as Colorado Springs, Colo., with 509,000 residents, whose airport offers 51 daily flights, and Boise, Idaho, with 415,000 people, where 79 flights take off each day from Boise Airport.

But both Colorado Springs and Boise are hundreds of miles from the nearest major international airport. Palmdale is about 50 miles from Burbank Airport and 66 miles from LAX, a distance that some carriers consider too short to justify new routes.

“Los Angeles World Airports came to give us a presentation ... and we agreed to listen,” said Janice Monahan, a spokeswoman for America West. “But nothing came of it.”

Shorter Routes

Despite this setback, Eaton, Palmdale Airport’s superintendent of operations, remains optimistic. He says the existing terminal is a perfect home for 70-seat regional jets favored by the airlines for shorter routes. Many airlines have turned to these planes to cut excess capacity from the system.

Horizon Airlines disagrees -- at least for now. The carrier has received dozens of requests from facilities such as Palmdale to start service with its regional jets, forcing it to set priorities for where it will go first. Palmdale isn’t on that list, said Dan Russo, Horizon’s director of marketing.

“We’ll be taking delivery of more jets between now and 2005 and, as we get closer to that, we will be making decisions on how to deploy those,” Russo said.

To entice carriers, the Los Angeles agency that operates Palmdale is discussing incentives, including free rent and pro bono marketing of flights. The city of Palmdale has also considered what’s known as a “travel bank” to attract air service.

Five communities, from Pensacola, Fla., to Eugene, Ore., have raised $8.6 million since 1999, using such banks to attract carriers to smaller airports. A travel bank is formed when businesses put a percentage of their travel budgets into an escrow account and withdraw from the account for employee travel on a certain airline.

In 2000, Stockton persuaded America West to provide two daily flights to Phoenix from its airport after several dozen companies and individuals raised $800,000 for prepaid travel. Like Palmdale, the airport had lacked commercial service for five years, requiring residents to drive at least an hour to another airport.

Travel banks are “even more viable, with economic problems and after 9/11,” said Mike Boggs, manager of airport business services for Mead & Hunt Inc. He said they are designed to do two things: influence airline decisions about service by “giving a community an edge and make a carrier successful for the long term in a market.”

Limit of 25 Flights a Day

Even if airlines decide to offer service from Palmdale, an agreement between the Los Angeles airport agency and the Air Force allows only 25 flights a day. The agency leases the terminal, runways and parking lot from the Air Force. It owns a huge tract adjacent to the military installation where it hopes to expand eventually.

The Air Force lease, which will run until 2017, will allow the airport agency to increase operations at the existing terminal to 200 flights per day if it completes additional environmental studies.

The airport agency is drafting a master plan for Palmdale Airport that will look at how an expansion would affect the desert environment, research its effects on freeway traffic and air pollution and analyze the demand for passenger and cargo service.

Several endangered species may live among the brush that covers the site, including the Mojave ground squirrel, the western burrowing owl, the desert tortoise and native plants, said Scott Harris, an associate wildlife biologist at the California Department of Fish and Game. Draft changes to the Los Angeles County General Plan designate 35% of the airport site as an environmentally sensitive area.

If the airport agency decided to expand the existing terminal, or to build a new facility, it would be required to search for the endangered species and complete detailed biological reports. Environmental issues aside, the agency’s lease with the Air Force bars it from starting construction soon on the 17,750-acre site owned by the Los Angeles airport agency and adjacent to the military property.

“If they wanted to develop the land next door for an airport they can’t, according to the joint-use agreement, until they get to a three-month average of 200 operations a day,” said Lt. Col. Celeo Wright, commander at the facility, Air Force Plant 42.

Airport supporters say they are also concerned that poor highway access could hamper the facility’s growth.

“A lot of people use the 14 Freeway to commute to and from the Los Angeles Basin,” said James Ledford, Palmdale’s mayor. “That could be a detriment to the airport if we can’t give passengers assurance they can get up here on time to meet a flight. This is something that needs to be overcome today.”

Regional officials suggest improved rail service and a dedicated beltway from Los Angeles to Palmdale, similar to a highway complex that links Dulles International Airport with Washington, D.C. Both of these ventures would be likely to cost millions and are not currently included in transportation planning for the area.

The Los Angeles Airport Commission recently granted a right of way that would allow the California Department of Transportation to build a 5.3-mile expressway to connect Palmdale Airport with the Antelope Valley Freeway. Caltrans hopes to complete the $165-million, six-lane expressway by 2010. The agency still needs $140 million.

County planners say access and other infrastructure issues are important, but they’re not crucial to starting service at the existing terminal.

“If you’re going to make that airport grow and go to a regionalization approach, you will have to do more up there, as far as infrastructure and access,” said Haueter, the deputy to County Supervisor Antonovich. “But those things don’t stop us from beginning right away to provide some service.”