AIRPORT HARD SELL PLANNED SUPPORTERS TO WOO AIRLINES.

PALMDALE - Armed with a slick marketing package and supported by representatives from the city and county of Los Angeles, supporters of the Palmdale Regional Airport are making another push to bring an airline to the High Desert.

In this latest push, Palmdale airport backers are targeting five specific airlines: American West Express, Delta Connection, United Express, American Eagle and Horizon Airlines. Each airline received a marketing package and will be contacted this month to set up face-to-face meetings.

``We would like to spur their interest in seeing Palmdale,'' said Terry Stubbings, assistant to Palmdale City Manager Bob Toone. ``We would like to get them out here, strike a deal and get the airplanes flying.''

The face-to-face meetings will be handled by a presentation team comprised of Stubbings; David Myers, the executive director of the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance and a former Palmdale councilman; Jim Ritchie, deputy executive director of the Los Angeles World Airports; and Fred Davis, a representative from Tri-Star, a Long Beach marketing firm.

Backers of the Palmdale airport hope to take advantage of the growth of regional airlines. Supporters note that the regional airlines have more than 1,000 jets ordered over the next five years and will have to find routes for them.

``The timing is good,'' Stubbings said.

Regional airlines have been growing at a steady clip the last 10 years. In 2000, 85 million passengers boarded a regional airline aircraft, an increase of 8 percent from the previous year, said Debbie McElroy, president of the Regional Airline Association.

However, the regional airlines are facing the same economic strains as the larger airlines. Business travel, the major stable of airlines, is down, McElroy said.

``Airlines get many, many solicitations from communities,'' McElroy said. ``The best presentations are those that provide hard data and show a commitment of the businesses to use the service.''

The Palmdale marketing packet that was mailed out to the airlines does include numbers indicating the community would use an airline that offered the right service. The package includes the results of a survey of 26 companies in the region indicating that of the 118,994 airline round-trip journeys they generate per year 79,000 of them would originate from Palmdale if adequate air service was available.

The package also includes letters of support from major employers, including SR Technics, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

In the Lockheed Martin letter, penned by Vice President Rick Baker, the company indicated an interest in air service to Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. The company stated it generates about 6,000 outbound and 9,000 inbound trips a year.

The marketing package also includes a work force analysis from the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance, a packet of information on Palmdale's demographics, and a video called ``Creating Global Impact,'' a look at the Antelope Valley's international business connections.

In a study commissioned by Los Angeles County, Tri-Star stated Palmdale can support a profitable passenger service linking the Antelope Valley with western cities like Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The market area from which the Palmdale airport could draw - about 600,000 people, taking in Santa Clarita as well as the Antelope Valley - is large enough to produce 1 million to 1.5 million airline passengers a year, the report added. Airports in comparably sized markets average 26 jet flights and 18 commuter flights daily, the report said.

In a marketing work plan developed for the city of Palmdale, Tri-Star identified five airlines most suitable for the Antelope Valley.

The two airlines identified as the top prospects - America West Express and United Express - were among the three airlines that pulled out of Palmdale in the 1990s.

America West Express, operated by Mesa Airlines for America West Airlines, flies into Phoenix and Las Vegas.

America West Express is slated to receive 40 new regional jets in the next two years and is looking for additional markets, according to a marketing work plan developed by Tri-Star.

America West stopped its Palmdale service because it was losing money.

During the 1990s, Mesa Airlines operated United Express, an airline that fed passengers into Los Angeles International Airport for United Airlines. That service stopped when Mesa Airlines was dropped by United Airlines as the United Express operator, and its replacement, Skywest, did not want to serve the Palmdale market. Skywest had operated its own service out of Palmdale in the early 1990s, but dropped out of the market, citing operating losses.

Undaunted by that fact, Tri-Star lists United Express as the second priority for the marketing campaign.

United Express serves San Francisco, listed by Tri-Star as Palmdale's largest passenger market. The airline also serves Denver, which would be a popular destination for Antelope Valley's aerospace companies.

Ranked third in priority is American Eagle, which serves the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. The Dallas-Ft. Worth area is the largest out-of-state market for Palmdale passengers, Tri-Star says.

Landing American Eagle would depend on the airline looking to establish markets west of Dallas, according to Tri-Star.

Ranked fourth is Horizon Airlines, which offers service to Sacramento and San Jose. The airline is believed to be interested in expanding into Southern California.

The fifth priority will be the Delta Connection, also operated by Skywest. The airline serves Salt Lake City and is believed to be interested in expanding after that city hosts the Winter Olympics in February 2002.

Tri-Star Marketing has worked with such airlines as American Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Hawaiian Airlines.

The company also has prepared marketing and strategy plans for the Santa Maria public airport, the Ventura County Department of Aviation, Sonoma County Airport and Stockton Metropolitan Airport.

Palmdale Regional Airport is comprised of a terminal and parking lot on land leased from the Air Force inside Air Force Plant 42. Under an agreement with the Air Force, Los Angeles World Airports - the city's airport department - can run 50 flights daily out of Palmdale using Plant 42's taxiways and runways.

The agreement includes provisions to expand the number of daily flights to 400.

LAWA also owns 17,000 acres immediately east of Plant 42 that is earmarked for an airport. The city of Los Angeles began acquiring the land in the 1960s in anticipation of building an airport in Palmdale. The Air Force doesn't want an airport there, because its flights would interfere with those coming out of Plant 42.