Plan to Shutter Santa Monica Airport has Businesses’ Fate Up in Air

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Plan to Shutter Santa Monica Airport has Businesses’ Fate Up in Air
Flight Path: Rymann Winter of Proteus Aviation

Proteus Aviation has been training pilots, including Rymann Winter, to fly since 1981.

Its days at Santa Monica Airport are numbered, however, after an agreement reached between the city of Santa Monica and the Federal Aviation Administration last month to close the airport after 2028. The decision has left Proteus and 20 other aviation-related businesses that operate at the airport uncertain about the future.

Winter, 43, bought the business in 2013, and said last week that he now had no idea whether Proteus will be able to relocate to another of the dozen-odd general aviation airports in the L.A. area.

“That’s our goal,” Winter said. “But there’s no guarantee that residents surrounding other airports will want more flights or whether our Westside clientele will want to drive to another airport.”

Proteus does about $600,000 a year in business, he said, and Winter and his two full-time and five part-time flight instructors are holding on to the hope that the airport won’t close – that either the agreement will be overturned in court or that city officials will have second thoughts as the closure deadline nears.

The agreement – a consent decree – is designed to resolve years of litigation.

City leaders have long been pushing to shut the airport down in response to residents’ concerns about noise and safety – there have been a few notable crashes in the surrounding neighborhoods, including one in which a plane piloted by actor Harrison Ford crash-landed at the adjacent Penmar Golf Course in 2015.

But the aviation industry and the federal government have fought to keep the airport, popular with business leaders and celebrities, open as a vital link in the region’s aviation system.

Leases terminated

After failing for years to force the federal government to allow the airport’s closure through litigation, the Santa Monica City Council voted last year not to renew the leases of its 21 aviation-related businesses. Those companies include two private terminal and fuel services, several flight schools, and various aircraft maintenance companies.

The FAA ruled, however, that the airport must stay open until at least 2023.

Santa Monica appealed that decision in federal court and was separately suing to end the federal requirement that the airport remain operational, but those matters became moot when the city and the FAA reached an accord with last month’s consent decree.

Besides the aviation-related businesses, about 350 planes are kept there and make rental payments to the Santa Monica Airport Administration. The facility is also home to dozens of nonaviation businesses, including artist studios and commercial office tenants.

A 2011 study commissioned by the city says the airport’s 227-acre campus generated roughly 900 direct and 600 indirect jobs. In addition, the airport annually produced $188 million in direct economic output and $87 million in indirect or induced economic impact, for a total economic impact exceeding $275 million, according to the study.

But only a small fraction of that – roughly $1 million in revenue – found its way into the city’s general fund; an additional $4 million went into the airport’s operating fund.

Under the consent decree signed Jan. 28, the city has the almost immediate option to shorten the nearly 5,000-foot runway to 3,500 feet, which would eliminate nearly half of the jet flights at the airport. The first step in that process – crafting a plan for how to shorten the runway – will begin Feb. 28 with the introduction of a design-build contract.

City Manager Rick Cole said the runway-shortening project will likely take several months. Also in coming months, new short-term lease agreements with the aviation-related airport tenants will be crafted. Those agreements and any lease renewals would expire by the end of 2028, after which city officials can move to shut down the airport.

Cole said the city plans to turn the airport into a park, though some of the current facilities not used for aviation – such as the Museum of Flying and the Barker Hangar, which is used for artist studios and event space – would likely be allowed to remain.

Jets grounded

Although all this will take months and years to play out, the agreement has already had one immediate impact: delaying the launch of service for a charter jet service.

JetSuiteX, an Irvine-based private jet service that rents out planes at the airport, had sought to start a service last week through which passengers could buy tickets for individual seats on flights to Carlsbad, Las Vegas, and San Jose. But the company had planned to use planes that cannot use the shorter runway allowed under the consent decree, said Chief Executive Alex Wilcox.

“Given the uncertainty surrounding the status of the airport, we have entered into this standstill agreement to provide time for an orderly process to negotiate with the city,” Wilcox said in a statement.

The shorter runway would force JetSuiteX to use smaller propeller-jet planes that can only carry 19 passengers instead of the 30 that the larger jets could hold, he said.

“That would mean more flights, more noise, and more pollution to carry the same number of passengers,” he said.

Other options

If the airport were to close, much of the business would have to shift to other general aviation airports.

About 12 general aviation airports operate in Los Angeles County, from Catalina Island to Lancaster. Van Nuys Airport – operated by Los Angeles World Airports, a city of L.A. agency that also runs Los Angeles International Airport – and Hawthorne Municipal Airport are the two most likely candidates to take up the flights, as they are the closest to the Westside.

Both Van Nuys and Hawthorne airports have the physical and – for now at least – legal capacity to handle the extra business. But those airports are also surrounded by residential communities unhappy about the noise, which is why Winter said he’s so concerned about whether those airports would take on the additional business.

Plus, it can take Westside residents and business executives up to an hour to drive on the 405 freeway to either of those airports.

Some flights would also undoubtedly shift to crowded LAX. But as JetSuiteX’s Wilcox said, the main attraction of Santa Monica Airport is to get away from the hassles of LAX.

“If you’re a Silicon Beach executive and want to fly up to Silicon Valley for the day, why would you ever want leave your home at 5 a.m. and wait at least two hours to get airborne from LAX when in two hours you could be on the ground in San Jose if you use Santa Monica Airport?” he said.

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