Outlying Airports’ Fates Tell a Tale of Two Cities

If you build it, they won’t come. If they come, you had better build it.

Such are the paradoxes in a tale of two airports, the first a vast, vaulting monument to modern aviation east of Los Angeles, the second a humble, World War II-vintage terminal to the south. While the first, Ontario International Airport, hopes for new airline suitors, the second, Long Beach Airport, has more than it can entertain.

Their contrasting fates reveal much about Southern Californians desperate to dodge crowded, increasingly costly LAX in the post- 9/11 world. Yes, we want shorter security lines, cheaper parking and fewer hassles getting from car to gate. But we are willing to go only so far and pay only so much for these advantages.

In that equation, Long Beach is beating Ontario, but both are worthy alternatives to LAX, in addition to the better-known Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport and Orange County’s John Wayne International Airport.

Let’s start with the benefits of both.

I thought my cell phone was malfunctioning when I pulled up to Ontario airport earlier this month, dialed spokesman Dennis Watson and was told to park in Lot F, where “the first three hours are free.”

Free?

After three hours, rates at the outdoor lot, a 10-minute shuttle ride from the terminals, start at 50 cents a half-hour, to a maximum of $6 per day. Parking within walking distance of the terminals is $9 to $24 a day--still less than LAX, where rates are $30 a day for central terminal parking and $8 to $10 at remote lots (where the first two hours are free).

Long Beach does Ontario one better: You can’t pay more than $6 a day for parking, even at the garage across the street from the terminal. The “remote” lot, two blocks away, is $3 a day (or $35 less a week than LAX’s cheapest lot).

Smaller crowds and fewer cars are other benefits of both airports. Ontario served 6.7 million passengers last year, about 10% of what LAX served, and Long Beach served just 587,473. Ontario has two terminals and Long Beach one, compared with LAX’s eight.

As for security hassles, “we never had the two-hour, three-hour lines for screening” reported at larger airports, says Sharon Diggs-Jackson, a spokeswoman for Long Beach Airport. The Ontario airport evacuated terminals fewer than five times for security problems between Sept. 11 and mid-May, says chief of airport police John W. Bangs III, compared with more than 40 evacuations reported at LAX.

But there the similarities between the Ontario and Long Beach airports end.

At Long Beach, facilities are expanding at a madcap rate while JetBlue, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines squabble over who gets the 41 slots (daily departures) the airport is limited to under noise-abatement agreements. Meanwhile, Ontario’s gleaming twin terminals, erected in 1998, were designed to serve up to 12 million passengers a year. Many of the 17 shops and restaurants were closed at midday, I noticed during a recent weekday tour.

The difference in growth of business at the two airports has to do with wealth, distance and fares, I’m told.

Airlines value affluent travelers and corporate frequent fliers who pay top dollar for their first- and business-class seats--and those customers are found closer to the coast, or so the airlines believe, says Watson, the Ontario airport spokesman. “We’re not the same demographic as Newport Beach, Westwood or Costa Mesa,” he says of the Inland Empire, from which the airport draws much of its business. By contrast, Long Beach sits strategically near the coast between Los Angeles and wealthier Orange County.

Although it took me 45 minutes to drive to each of the airports from downtown Los Angeles in light freeway traffic, I logged 271/2 miles to Long Beach versus 41 miles to Ontario. Even Bangs, the Ontario airport police chief, says “after 3 p.m., forget it” if you need to drive from L.A. to Ontario on a weekday.

Fares out of Ontario are usually higher, sometimes a lot higher, than out of LAX or other airports in the region, say spokesman Watson and Ontario travel agent Debbie Graham, who heads a 39-year-old nonprofit group of supporters called Friends of Ontario International Airport. It’s a sore point with airport boosters. Watson says some airlines seem to regard Ontario as a “premium” airport--that is, the airlines charge extra for the convenience of catching flights near home.

Still, Ontario, with passenger traffic down about 7% through March compared with the same period last year, has weathered the post-9/11 slump in air travel better than LAX, down 16.3%. The airport wins kudos for its easy layout and airy design.

Passenger traffic at Long Beach soared 42% through March versus last year, lifted by the addition of JetBlue in August. Now flying five daily flights, to JFK and Dulles airport in suburban Washington, the popular low-fare carrier plans to add 22 more daily flights by the end of October. The airport recently rejected requests for additional slots by American Airlines for nonstops to Chicago and JFK beginning June 15 and new slots by Alaska Airlines for nonstops to Seattle beginning Sept. 9. Claiming those slots were promised to JetBlue, the airport granted the two airlines temporary slots. The issue was under appeal as of last week.

To keep up with the pace, Long Beach last month hastily added a rental car facility and 8,640 square feet of terminal space in modular units next to the main building. In July it plans to break ground on a 12,000-square-foot addition with three new baggage-claim carousels, expanded security screening and concessions.

As for prices, JetBlue has a reputation for undercutting the competition on its coast-to-coast routes. For other destinations, such as Phoenix, via America West, and Dallas-Fort Worth, on American, spokeswoman Diggs-Jackson thinks her airport’s fares are “very competitive” with LAX or maybe $20 to $30 more, depending on the flow of specials and promotions.

Business traveler Terry Hirsch, who flies into Southern California every four to six weeks from Dallas-Fort Worth, tells me she finds better fares to Long Beach than to LAX or John Wayne.

I asked Hirsch what it would take to make her put up with the frustrations of LAX. She laughed and said, “The flight would have to be almost free.”

I wouldn’t go that far. LAX still offers the most flight choices and, for Los Angeles residents, close-in convenience.

But after touring the charmingly retro Long Beach terminal and the bright, elegant Ontario airport--the most spotless I have ever seen--I would be willing to give either a try.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail [email protected].