AIRPORT—Pulled Marketing Campaign Adds to Ontario Airport Ills

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With all the chaos at Los Angeles International Airport in recent weeks, Ontario Airport would seem to be poised to benefit as a backup facility.

But Ontario has been hit hard as airlines have cut back flights and budget woes at Los Angeles World Airports, which operates LAX and Ontario, is forcing the postponement of a $2 million marketing campaign.

“The good news is you can get into and out of Ontario faster; the bad news is that the airlines are taking a hike,” said Jack Driscoll, a local aviation consultant who previously was executive director of LAWA. “It’s going to be tough to grow Ontario, at least until the dust settles within the airline industry, which could take a few years.”

The bulk of the flight cutbacks have come from United Airlines as it confronts system-wide losses that could top $2 billion by year’s end. Over the last month, United has cut seven of its 11 daily flights out of Ontario, eliminating all of its San Francisco and Chicago runs. It now only flies to Denver out of Ontario. Southwest Airlines has also cut one of its 62 daily flights at the airport.

“These cuts are just devastating,” said Lydia Kennard, LAWA executive director.


Retaining the base

Ontario’s passenger base has been the eastern part of L.A. County and the Inland Empire. In an attempt to expand the airport’s regional draw, LAWA completed a $270 million terminal for Ontario Airport in 1998, boosting capacity to 10 million passengers a year.

Yet last year, only 6.6 million passengers flew in and out of Ontario. Through September of this year, it was 5 million passengers and given the sharp decline after Sept. 11, this year’s total is likely to be slightly less than last year.

Unlike John Wayne Airport in Orange County, where passenger traffic bounced back in October and only a couple of flights have been cut back, Ontario Airport has been hit harder.

One reason may be that John Wayne caters more to the business traveler, while Ontario tends to have more leisure or budget-conscious travelers, according to UC San Diego Professor Stephen Erie, who tracks regional airport issues. Prior to Sept. 11, business travel had been in gradual decline for more than a year. The hit to leisure and family travel was more sudden.

A marketing campaign that might have stemmed some of the traffic decline has been put on the shelf indefinitely, all but killed by a deepening budget crisis at LAWA.

The quasi-independent agency of the City of Los Angeles is losing around $1.1 million a day, as income from landing fees, concessions and parking have declined and millions of dollars more are spent on beefed up security.

“We had just started a marketing campaign this summer for Ontario and passenger traffic was up 7 percent in August (compared to August 2000) making Ontario the fastest growing airport in the country,” Kennard said. “Then came Sept. 11 and these flight cuts. It’s been a case of really unfortunate timing.”

There was a little good news last week with the announcement by L.A. Mayor James Hahn that AeroMexico will start daily service this January from Ontario to Hermosillo, in Mexico’s Sonora state. But that is only one daily flight, hardly enough to offset the cuts from United and Southwest.

During his mayoral campaign, Hahn came out against the LAX expansion plan and said he wanted to do more to expand LAWA’s other airports at Ontario and Palmdale.

He reiterated his support of this approach last week, but said his primary concern is ensuring the safety of passengers and employees at all of LAWA’s airports.

“The mayor is not going back on his word here,” said Hahn spokeswoman Hilda Delgado. “He intends to resume the marketing campaign as soon as it is financially feasible. But first, we have to take care of safety and security issues.”

Delgado said that after these issues are addressed, Hahn would consider a move to lower landing fees at Ontario. Those fees were recently raised to $1.59 per pound.

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