Redistribution 2000-2008

Redistribution of passengers at Southern California airports

In Southern California, the eight years from 2000 to 2008 brought dramatic changes to the aviation industry. The continuously upward trend in air travel was broken by factors that could not be anticipated by government planning organizations like the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG).

While planners envisioned multi-billion dollar investments in Maglev trains and new airports to regionalize traffic away from LAX, travelers took matters into their own hands and simply avoided the Los Angeles airport.

Two other airports owned by Los Angeles World Airports, LA/Ontario and LA/Palmdale, were envisioned as key to regionalized travel but neither took off during this period.

The reversal of fortunes in air travel is often blamed on the price of oil and the state of the economy but some airports have grown despite being faced with these same factors.

The chart below shows the dramatic redistribution of traffic between Southern California airports during this period. LAX lost 7-1/2 million passengers, 11.1 percent of its business. Most didn’t stop flying; they switched to other airports.

Over 2 million more travelers opted to fly from San Diego (SAN). Over 2 million shifted to nearby Long Beach Airport (LGB) when JetBlue and other airlines filled the airport’s empty slots. More than a million of them switched to John Wayne airport (SNA) after county supervisors relaxed the airport’s passenger cap. Burbank (BUR) and Palm Springs (PSP) airports also saw growth in 2000-2008.

Redistribution of passengers at Southern California Airports

Airport	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	Change
										2000-2008
LAX	67,303,182	61,606,253	56,223,843	54,982,838	60,704,568	61,489,523	61,041,066	62,438,583	59,815,646	-7,487,536
SNA	7,772,801	7,324,557	7,903,066	8,535,130	9,272,394	9,627,172	9,613,540	9,979,699	8,989,603	1,216,802
ONT	6,739,329	6,702,400	6,516,858	6,547,877	6,935,713	7,214,171	7,049,904	7,207,150	6,232,761	-506,568
BUR	4,748,742	4,487,335	4,620,683	4,729,936	4,916,800	5,512,619	5,689,291	5,921,336	5,331,404	582,662
LGB	637,853	587,473	1,453,511	2,875,525	2,926,873	3,034,032	2,758,362	2,906,556	2,913,926	2,276,073
PSP	1,281,073	1,174,592	1,109,057	1,246,842	1,367,804	1,419,087	1,529,005	1,610,943	1,542,925	261,852
SCAG Region Subtotal	88,482,980	81,882,610	77,827,018	78,918,148	86,124,152	88,296,604	87,681,168	90,064,267	84,826,265	-3,656,715
SAN	15,820,342	15,184,332	14,931,854	15,260,791	16,377,304	17,372,521	17,481,942	18,056,971	18,128,093	2,307,751
SoCal Total	104,303,322	97,066,942	92,758,872	94,178,939	102,501,456	105,669,125	105,163,110	108,056,971	102,954,358	-1,348,964

Revised February 4, 2009