DOA master plan should be DOA

Editorial Focus: The Department of Airports master plan's location options doesn't include Palmdale Regional Airport. Department of Airport officials have pointedly refused to even see Palmdale on their radar screens. Until the Department of Airports starts working with the Antelope Valley, its proposed master plan should be dead on arrival.

Based on what we've seen so far, the approach for landing a vastly expanded Los Angeles International Airport ought to be waved-off for a go-around.

So far, the so-called master plan for LAX expansion is careening all over the sky.

One minute, Department of Airports officials optimistically advertise overwhelming political and public support for a master plan seemingly on final approach, and the next minute they talk about "third options" to calm L.A. Airport's frightened neighbors.

None of the musical runway location options include Palmdale Regional Airport - a facility that legions of Department of Airports officials pointedly refuse to even see on their radar screens, let alone clear to enter the landing pattern.

The message was reiterated this week in a briefing of Los Angeles County Planning Commissioners by an LAX consultant who acknowledged the existence of Palmdale Regional Airport, only to dismiss it as perhaps something worthy of afterthought once the Los Angeles International jumbo design has reached the terminal gate and deplaned, around the year 2015.

Meanwhile, more big bucks are being pumped into a public relations and advertising campaign in support of a "Master Plan" that Department of Airports officials concede isn't even fully drafted yet.

It's really quite an interesting strategy: Even as they're asking the public to support an LAX expansion plan, officials are telling critics that the plan can't be opposed or even seriously debated because its specific contents haven't been publicly disclosed.

The approach is not unlike launching a ship by breaking a bottle of celebratory champagne - then laying the keel after the christening.

Supposedly, the Department of Airports has a consulting team feverishly working right now on the future of Palmdale Regional Airport. But it's difficult to imagine what this so-far stealthy team might be trying to accomplish in light of the public anti-Palmdale scoffing from LAX officials and their designated speakers.

A county planning commissioner actually laughed aloud this past week when the Palmdale solution was mentioned in connection with the county's future air transportation needs.

If there's anything laughable about all this, it's the approach the city of L.A. is using to justify foregone conclusions about LAX expansion.

If the LAX Master Plan was an aircraft, it would crash on arrival, unable to even find a fiscal runway that stretches anywhere from $8 billion to $12 billion. They don't build runways or government budgets that long. Just ask the Metropolitan Transit Authority, whose long-range subway plan is looking more and more like the prototype for the LAX Master Plan. The subway isn't flying, and neither are the grandiose schemes for an airport already too big, too crowded and too complex for human habitation.