Palmdale can ease airport congestion

Editorial Focus: While flight delays are soaring and ground access problems are nearing gridlock, airports across the nation are becoming quagmires. Southern California's best and nearest solution, timewise, is utilization of Palmdale Airport now.

Deadlines have passed and the hopes of acquiring Lockheed's former site to build a new, modern facility have faded to black.

A series of hearings this month will gather hot and heavy input on aircraft noise and curfews for the existing airport, which has only about 465 acres.

Plans to expand by an additional 130 acres in order to build a new terminal were recently scuttled when an acquisition deadline passed.

(A Southwest Airlines 737 jet carrying 137 passengers and five crew members skidded off the end of a runway at Burbank Airport on March 5 and onto a nearby street, nearly hitting a gas station. Six people suffered minor injuries.)

By contrast, Air Force Plant 42 has 5,700 acres and a joint agreement exists between the Air Force and Los Angeles World Airports to ultimately permit 200 commercial landings and 200 takeoffs a day.

When that threshold is reached, development could be under way on the 17,700-acre World Airports property east of Plant 42.

Added together, we have 23,400 acres specifically fenced off for aviation operations. That's more than 50 times the postage-stamp size of Burbank Airport.

Everyone who flies out of Los Angeles International Airport knows what a ground-access mess that is, compounded recently by the Democratic National Convention.

The Associated Press reports that flight cancellations and delays are becoming routine for United Airlines this summer, a result of stormy weather and stormier relations between the world's largest airline and its pilots.

United canceled 165 flights on Aug. 7.

The Federal Aviation Administration reports the delays out of O'Hare airport in Chicago, a United hub, increased 23% last month over July 1999.

The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners has approved a parking rate increase for Los Angeles International Airport's central terminal area lots and the Van Nuys Flyaway.

New rates in the parking structures adjacent to the LAX terminals will be $1 per half-hour up to a maximum of $24 per day. That's up from $3 for the initial two hours, then $1 per hour up to a maximum of $16 per day.

Rates at remote Lots B and C will remain $5 and $7 per day, respectively.

Van Nuys' daily parking rate will increase from $1 to $2 per day, with a 15-day maximum stay, according to the board, which based its decision last week on the premise that the low rates attracted many nontravelers who were using the lot for parking and not for travel to LAX.

The rate hikes are aimed at increasing parking availability during peak periods and reducing traffic congestion.

The rate increases take effect Oct. 2.

Parking was free at Palmdale Regional Airport when air carriers were operating from there.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich is advocating a north county member of the L.A. Board of Airport Commissioners and that's a good idea, but it's unlikely to fly in the near future.

Now that SR Technics is modifying and renovating aircraft on property leased from L.A. World Airports and thousands of additional jobs are being created over the next half decade, the need for air service at Palmdale is growing dramatically.

In the late 1920s, William Fox, who was the aviation chief for Los Angeles County for many years, envisioned Palmdale as the Southland's prime region for a reliever airport to curb the inevitable congestion in the L.A. Basin.

It's high time that Palmdale fulfills that long-anticipated role to help the nation alleviate a commercial aviation crisis that is developing at a dangerous rate.