Ontario Airport to Close!
Imagine finding that headline on your morning paper one day in the not too distant future. If the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the organization that owns and operates the Los Angeles / Ontario International Airport, has their way that day may come sooner rather than later. At a December meeting they entertained a proposal to close one of Ontario’s two terminals amid discussions of the significant reduction in passenger traffic at the regional airport.
The Ontario airport has been managed by the City of Los Angeles since a 1967 agreement between the two cities. Back in those days, the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and the Ontario Airport (ONT) frequently operated in concert with aircraft diversions, marketing programs and pricing structure. But after three decades of steady growth and earning a Forbes magazine nod as one of the nation's top "alternative airports," Ontario International is now among the fastest-declining midsize airports in the country. The possible closure signifies a big swing in fortunes for the airport's twin $269-million terminals, which opened in 1998 as Ontario was bursting at the seams. Both terminals were built to handle 10 million passengers a year, but only slightly more than 4 million are expected for this year.
A pillar of pride for the Inland Empire, which rode the housing boom to a spectacular bust, the facility lost a third of its 7.2 million annual passengers between 2007 and 2010. The airport is on track to lose an additional 200,000 this year — setting it back to 1987 levels. Nationally, only Cincinnati is shedding travelers at a faster pace.
The economic pounding suffered by the Inland Empire, where unemployment peaked at more than 14%, is a significant factor in the airport's decline according to officials at LAWA. But Inland Empire leaders suspect something more insidious is at work. Increasingly, they are convinced that Los Angeles World Airports, which operates both LAX and Ontario, has become an absentee landlord bent on a multibillion-dollar modernization of LAX at the expense of its weaker stepchild and potential competitor 56 miles to the east. ONT is currently saddled with the highest fees in the region for air carriers, and fares that can be twice those at other Southern California airports which has driven airlines and hundreds of thousands of passengers to other portals, particularly Los Angeles International Airport.
A chorus of Inland officials have called for the city of Los Angeles to cede control of the Inland destination to a local authority, either the City of Ontario or an Inland Airport Authority. They claim the city of Los Angeles has neglected ONT in favor of LAX. They say traffic has dropped at the airport because LAWA has made it too costly for airlines to do business there by overstaffing the airport, charging several million dollars annually for administrative work and not doing enough to encourage new airlines to land or the airlines that are there to expand. The fees airlines pay to land and rent terminal space at Ontario airport have typically been higher than any other Southern California airport.
The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestions, the Southern California Association of Governments, The Southwest California Legislative Council and numerous municipalities and organizations throughout Southern California have all urged LAWA to shift control – as well as responsibility and risk – to another entity so LAWA can maintain its focus on developing LAX without distraction. Reps. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, and Ken Calvert, R-Corona, recently sent a letter Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and a second one to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asking for them to improve Ontario’s worsening condition.
The city of Ontario has made an offer to buy the airport, assume its debt and protect all of the current employees. Thus far there has been no response from either LAWA or L.A Mayor Vallaraigosa. Continued stalemate in these discussion will result in ongoing declines in traffic through ONT, making LAWA’s case even stronger that the airport should be shuttered as it did with its Palmdale airport commercial operations in 2008. If that were the case, Temecula Valley commuters would have few options outside the major hubs of Los Angeles or San Diego. Our convenience would be impact ted, our travel time increased and our economy would be dealt another blow.
Under the current operation, it is estimated that plummeting passenger counts at ONT, coupled with higher operating and passenger costs, have cost the Inland Empire economy an estimated $500 million annually and over 9,000 jobs – in a region that already suffers from one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. Rehabilitation of operations at ONT is critical to the economy of the Inland Empire, of Southern California in general and is essential for continuity of safe, affordable travel options for our regions 19 million residents.
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