Voters killed El Toro airport 10 years ago today - OC Register
The passage of Measure W set a new course to transform the Marine base into the Great Park, and more homes and businesses.
What is becoming a large regional park, neighborhoods, businesses and offices at the old El Toro Marine base was once on track to become a large international airport.
But 10 years ago today, on March 5, 2002, the passage of Measure W in effect killed the airport.
The vote was the climax of a divisive and intense decade-long political and legal battle about the future of the military base.
The fight, in essence, pitted a pro-airport coalition of county government, north county residents and the city of Newport Beach against south county residents who passionately opposed the airport with a grass-roots campaign, their supportive city governments and Irvine politician Larry Agran.
Leonard Kranser, one of the anti-airport citizen activists involved in the struggle, says, "With air travel volume as low as it is now, the airport would have been a financial disaster for the county."
February 27 - March 4, 2012
JWA passenger traffic flat in January - OC Register
Passenger traffic at John Wayne Airport in January was virtually unchanged from January 2011 after travel at the facility declined year-over-year every month last year.
"Considering the passenger levels are nearly flat, we are pleased," said Jenny Wedge, airport spokeswoman.
Air passenger traffic was up across the region in January, with LAX growing by 5.4% to 9.4 million over the same month in 2011. Even more encouraging for the economy, LAX's domestic travel outperformed foreign service 5.72% to 4.62%.
Long Beach airport traffic was up 9.6% in January.
JWA begins new year down slightly
Airline
passenger traffic at John Wayne Airport decreased in January 2012 as
compared
to January 2011. In January 2012, the Airport served 636,573
passengers, a
decrease of 0.026% when compared to the January 2011 passenger traffic
count of
636,742.
Commercial
aircraft operations decreased 2.1%, while Commuter aircraft operations
decreased 34.6% when compared to January 2011.
February 20 - 26, 2012
FAA: No more changes to JWA departure path - Daily Pilot
Federal Aviation Administration officials told a group of Newport Beach city leaders and residents Wednesday that the FAA would not make any additional adjustments to a contentious John Wayne Airport departure path.
Residents upset about the year-old satellite-navigated route asked the administration to change the paths of some planes in an attempt to decrease noise, and to send some planes farther offshore before turning down the coast.
The FAA, however, has already adjusted the procedures twice in response to residents' concerns. While the aviation officials said they would take suggestions for a new route on the drawing board, which will apply to different flights, they said the existing path was set for now.
Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff and Councilwoman Leslie Daigle, who arranged the FAA meeting, both said Friday they were impressed with the agency's willingness to listen.
The city is negotiating with airport and FAA officials about John Wayne's passenger limits, so city leaders have been delicate in their flight path requests.
New Supervisors’ Chairman Seeks to Extend Term Limits - Voice of OC
It’s been rumored for months that John Moorlach, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, wants to seek a third term. This week he made it official.
On Tuesday Moorlach will propose to his colleagues that they place a measure on the June primary ballot that would extend county supervisors' limit to three terms or 12-years.
“Game on,” Moorlach said, after getting off a plane Thursday night at John Wayne Airport.
Website Editor: A third term would allow Supervisor Moorlach to shepherd an extension of the John Wayne Airport passenger restrictions for the benefit of his Costa Mesa and Newport Beach district residents.
While voters seem to like term limits, Moorlach said longer terms are exactly what’s needed to have better public policy.
Shawn Nelson, vice chairman of the Board of Supervisors, counts himself as a supporter of term limits but says Moorlach’s proposal for a three-term limit seems right.
Nelson also now sees that even the simplest issues, like developing small parks in cities, take longer than expected.
Newport officials, residents to meet with FAA - Daily Pilot
Since new flight route from JWA was instituted last March, some in Corona del Mar, Newport Coast have said there is more noise.
Some Newport Beach city officials and residents are heading to the Federal Aviation Administration's Los Angeles offices Wednesday to assess John Wayne Airport's controversial one-year-old flight route and to advocate for changes.
Since the route was implemented last March, residents from Corona del Mar and Newport Coast have complained of more noise.
The meeting comes as the FAA plans for another flight path, one that would apply to the remaining half of all departures. JWA is one of the nation's many airports undergoing a transition to satellite-controlled navigation.
FAA officials modified the current route twice to accommodate noise issues, ending up with a procedure called STREL.
Local cities join fight against L.A. over Ontario airport - San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Cities and businesses in the East San Gabriel Valley are lining up with the city of Ontario in its effort to wrest control of Ontario International Airport away from the city of Los Angeles.
In the last few weeks, city councils from Claremont, Industry, Diamond Bar, Monrovia, Pomona, South El Monte and Walnut have all passed strongly worded resolutions in support of Ontario gaining possession of the regional airport often used by San Gabriel Valley residents and businesses.
In addition, backing for the ownership switch is coming from regional agencies. The six-county Southern California Association of Governments believes a local entity would better serve "decentralization" of airport travel in Southern California.
The San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership met on Feb. 1 to execute a strategy of support for the city of Ontario to gain control, though the city-business partnership hadn't taken an official position.
February 13 - 19, 2012
Bob Hope credit rating is up in the air - Glendale News-Press
Agency is waiting to see how transit center is funded before changing airport's AA- status.
Credit rating agency Fitch said Thursday that it might downgrade the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority after it gets a clearer picture of the airfield's financial standing later this year.
Fitch has already put the airport authority on "watch negative" status, citing weakened parking revenues and plans to build a multimillion-dollar transit center for Bob Hope Airport.
O.C.-Hawaii flights move to nights - OC Register Travel Editor
The 737s from Honolulu will return to John Wayne Airport next month.
You'd better like the dark, because travelers from Orange County to Hawaii are going to have to deal with a lot of it. The flight to Honolulu will now leave at 6:30 p.m. and arrive in Honolulu at 10:15 p.m. That's a huge change – the flight used to leave at 9 a.m. and arrive in Honolulu just after noon. The old flight left time for first-day swimming or sunning, afternoon pupus, dinner and a night on the town. Now it's straight from airport to bed unless you are up for a midnight tiki bar crawl.
The return flight is also troublesome. It's a red-eye. Out around midnight, back in Orange County as the sun rises. The flight used to leave at 2 p.m. and arrive at John Wayne Airport at 9 p.m. or so.
Most ominously, the new flight times almost exactly mirror the times for United's nonstop service from Orange County to Maui that the airline pulled the plug on last year. Let's hope the outcome isn't the same.
It's an ugly option that will have a lot of people weighing inconvenient flight times against dealing with the trip to LAX.
The big good news is still nearly four months away. AirTran, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwest, will start the first flights to Mexico in June – one daily nonstop each to Cabo San Lucas and Mexico City. I'm keeping an eye on WestJet, which seems to be doing well on its service to Vancouver, B.C., but has fallen into a stop-and-start schedule for Calgary, Alberta.
Japan Airlines to operate first-ever nonstop flight between San Diego and Asia
First-ever
nonstop flights between San Diego and Asia will commence in December
2012. Japan Airlines (JAL) will offer service between San Diego
International Airport and Tokyo Narita International Airport with the
new 787 Dreamliner aircraft, marking the first time JAL will fly out of
San Diego.
The
announcement is significant, as San Diego was the largest U.S. market
without nonstop service to Asia. The new service is made possible by
the advent of the 787 Dreamliner, the first aircraft with the size,
airfield performance and range to make the nonstop oceanic flight
viable. The San Diego-Tokyo route is the first announced scheduled
Dreamliner service in Southern California.
February 6 - 12, 2012
My speed date with JWA's Terminal - OC Register
Register Travel Editor Gary A. Warner's plan to leisurely check out Terminal C's amenities one recent morning goes awry when TSA decides it needs a break instead.
My relationship with John Wayne's Terminal C is still having problems. Maybe we should see the aviation equivalent of a marriage counselor.
The latest: I made a quick trip to Las Vegas the day after the Super Bowl, which meant flying Southwest, which meant going to Terminal C at John Wayne Airport.
I thought it would be a chance to finally see the centerpiece of the $543 million project. It hasn't been for a lack of trying on my part (and to be fair, the airport's part). But trying only gets you so far. More . . .
Website Editor: My first visit to Terminal C was to pick up a visitor the other evening. At 8PM the huge terminal was almost empty. Several TSA and airline employees, who were hanging around with little to do, said they liked it. No one was sure where the new customs area was located.
The adjacent Terminal B ticketing area had several seemingly abandoned ticket counters where airline signs had been removed.
The new credit card payment facilities in Parking garage C were not yet operational. The garage was nearly empty.
This first visit reinforced my belief that the County and Newport Beach had agreed to use up all of the available real estate at JWA while limiting the number of new boarding gates or overnight aircraft parking spaces that someday could support an increase in the number of flights.
Orange County goals include airport restrictions
Board of Supervisors Chairman John Moorlach outlined the 2012 goals for the county. One goal is to "Make significant progress on settlement agreement amendment for John Wayne Airport."
The current settlement agreement expires in 2015. Any change in the passenger and flight limits at the airport probably will require an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act. Negotiations with Newport Beach to identify the options to be studied in the EIR are in their early stage.
Bob Hope passenger numbers down in 2011 - Burbank Leader
Bob Hope Airport in December continued to see fewer passengers compared to a year ago, part of a prolonged trend that has also affected the airfield’s revenues.
Passenger traffic at Bob Hope dropped about 2.4% in December compared to the same period in 2010, although that was at a slower pace than the 3.25% in November, officials reported.
For the year, about 4.3 million passengers traveled through the airfield from January through December 2011, down about 3.6% for 2010, when there were more than 4.4 million.
American Airlines, which will end service at Bob Hope Airport on Thursday, saw its numbers drop from 26,516 in December 2010 to 21,916 in December 2011, when the carrier dropped one daily round-trip flight to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Parking revenues in December also continued their decline, according to the report, bringing in about $1.42 million, or about 3.8% below budget projections of $1.47 million, Gill said.
Website Editor: Final numbers from BUR confirm our previous report last month that the six airports in the region served 83.9 million passengers, an increase of 3.1 percent in traffic over 2011.
January 30 - February 5, 2012
LAX facing head wind in international travel - LA Times
Los Angeles International Airport is lagging well behind other big-city U.S. airports in the contest to attract highly prized foreign travelers at the levels seen before the global recession caused a steep dip in international trips.
Large airports in California and most other regions of the country have surpassed their pre-slump foreign traffic numbers from 2005, sometimes dramatically so, according to passenger data examined by The Times.
But LAX, which is spending billions to regain its footing as the premier international gateway on the West Coast, still has 4% fewer international arrival and departures compared with its peak of nearly 17.5 million six years ago.
Overall, LAX, the nation's third busiest airport, has the second-lowest recovery rate among the 10 U.S. airports that handle the most international passengers.
A particular drag on Los Angeles' performance was the 2010 bankruptcy of Mexicana Airlines, LAX's largest international carrier. Experts also note that the terminal complex lacks a convenient transit system and that international passengers often encounter a tedious and time-consuming arrival process - creating incentives for some travelers to use other gateways, such as San Francisco.
Airlines increasingly have the option not to use LAX because of advanced aircraft designs. Longer-range jetliners arriving from overseas now can bypass Los Angeles and fly directly into the nation's interior. In addition to the A380, the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner has a range of nearly 10,000 miles.
Calvert, Lewis hear from FAA there is little it can do to assist improved operations at ONT - Riverside Press-Enterprise
Federal Aviation Administration officials have expressed to two Inland Empire politicians that there is little it can do to improve operations at the struggling LA/Ontario International Airport, despite its concerns about the decline in traffic.
Congressmen Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands and Ken Calvert, R-Riverside, met with FAA officials this week as a follow-up to a letter they sent to Secretary of
Transportation Ray LaHood raising their concerns about operations at ONT.
The congressmen also met with Los Angeles World Airports, the agency which oversees ONT and Los Angeles International Airport.
In their meetings with FAA and LAWA officials in Washington D.C., the Inland Empire politicians warned that ONT is on a "downward spiral toward failure,"
unless federal and local officials focus more attention on its operations.
In a meeting with Gina Marie Lindsey, executive director of LAWA, Calvert and Lewis urged her to "do more to market the airport and convince airlines
to use it as an alternative to LAX."
The congressmen rejected claims by both agencies that the drop in traffic has been caused by the weakened economy and changes in the aviation industry.
Airport coverage is disappointing - Burbank Leader letters
The Burbank Leader’s recent editorial and news coverage of Bob Hope Airport has been disappointing, to say the least.
The Leader ran a correction of its Jan. 14 editorial that said the exit of American Airlines would mean a loss of 3.9 million annual passengers at Bob Hope Airport, a figure that overshot the mark by a whopping 3.6 million.
Then followed a feeble attempt to analyze and critique the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority’s ongoing evaluation of the financial feasibility of building the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center, implying that the cities of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena were somehow at risk, and calling for a “serious and thorough evaluation” of that financial risk — as if no such evaluation were taking place.
Finally, the Leader ran a story about current litigation against the airport authority involving a harassment complaint by an airport police officer who alleged discrimination because of sexual orientation. The Leader had no business “illustrating” the story with the likeness of an officer who had no involvement in it.
Readers have a right to expect something better than these three examples in future coverage.
Victor Gill
Public Affairs, Bob Hope Airport
