Palmdale Airport: Regional terminal with room to grow

"You ain't seen nothing yet!"

One airline presently serves the Palmdale terminal on land leased from the Air Force on Plant 42 property, north of Avenue P off of 20th Street East.

Providing round-trip service seven days a week between Los Angeles International Airport and Palmdale is United Express (Mesa Airlines).

With free local parking, frequent and infrequent flyers find it convenient to fly from or to Palmdale, particularly if they are connecting with United. This feeder system can often offer free or nominal fares between Antelope Valley to LAX.

The airline counter is housed in the spacious terminal building completed in June of 1971 at a cost of $.5 million.

The airline uses the taxiways and runways at Air Force Plant 42 under an agreement that can be expanded all the way up to 400 operations a day (200 landings and 200 takeoffs.)

The Palmdale Regional Airport Advisory Council is pro-actively working to attract additional airlines and to establish new routes to the north and east - possibly San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and Las Vegas.

Still lying fallow to the east of Air Force Plant 42 is the Los Angeles Department of Airports' 17,700-acre "ranch" that was acquired following the initial 1968 announcement of what was then billed as the Palmdale Intercontinental Airport.

Since that time, the "intercontinental" airport has undergone two name changes - to Palmdale International Airport to Palmdale Regional Airport.

Some time before the leasedland facility on Plant 42 is maxed out at 400 operations a day, it is expected that the Department of Airports will develop runway and terminals on its sprawling property, which is six times the geographical size of LAX.

The combined Department of Airports property and the 5,700acre Air Force Plant 42 spread provide 23,400 acres of aviationdedicated land - an area much larger than 14,000-acre Manhattan Island.

The severe down-drafts that airlines experienced during the recession made it difficult for them to expand.

Today, with the airline industry showing increasing signs of strength, it's probable that some time in the next century millions of air passengers will be using Palmdale Regional Airport annually, as predicted in the 1960s.

It's literally true:

"We ain't seen nothing yet!"