Burbank airport soars despite continued opposition.

Burbank airport soars despite continued opposition

When the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport opened in 1930, the San Fernando Valley had fewer than 25,000 residents and only a few aircraft flew into it each week. The commercial airline industry was in its infancy and most of the flights carried mail or were tests of Lockheed Corp. equipment.

Lockheed Corp. no longer owns the airport and now there are 1.3 million people living in the valley. Six major carriers operate about 75 flights a day out of the airport, where last year passenger traffic jumped 29 percent to 3.5 million.

For many years the airport was considered a stepchild to sprawling Los Angeles International Airport in the southwest corner of the city on Santa Monica Bay. To a certain extent the airport still is considered a secondary operation to LAX but with the valley's continuing population growth, and the commuting and parking problems involved in getting to the bigger facility, the popularity of Burbank has been growing.

But there have also been growing pains.

Numerous noise lawsuits have been filed against the airport by valley residents and several homeowner groups are closely monitoring the progress of plans to build a new terminal, a controversial project that depends on the outcome of negotiations with Lockheed over 100 acres of land.

There have also been operations' setbacks at the airport that have curtailed growth. TWA and Continental airlines discontinued service at Burbank in 1990 and just this past May, USAir pulled out.

Airport officials say, however, that the three airlines' decision was tied more to conditions in the commercial aviation industry than to the lack of passengers at Burbank.

They said when carries have pulled out of Burbank, other airlines have stepped in with new service.

"I think right now we're down about five flights a day from where we were before USAir pulled out," said Elly Mixsell, the airport's manager of community relations.

The loss of USAir was a major blow to the airport because the carrier operated as many as 35 daily departures, including the flights of PSA, a major West Coast airline that was taken over by USAir. PSA operated aircraft with the familiar smiling face on the nose of the planes.

"When it happened we weren't sure about what was going to happen but every destination has been picked up by other airlines. We have recovered almost entirely. I think we're down by about five flights a day and we expect that our passenger traffic this year will be ahead of last year," said Mixsell.

Destinations served by nonstop flights out of Burbank include San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas/Fort Worth, Oakland, San Jose, Portland and Las Vegas. Connecting air service is available to just about any destination in the world from Burbank.

One of the primary reasons traffic increased so signficantly in 1990 over 1989 was the start of service out of Burbank by Southwest Airlines, which has low-cost, high-frequency service to Las Vegas, Sacramento and Oakland.

Service to those cities is available at one-way prices that range from $29 to $59.

Airport officials said most of the people who use Burbank airport are from the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys and are about evenly divided between leisure and business travelers.

They note, however, more business travelers from the downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood areas are using Burbank as an alternative to LAX. During the past year, the airport started a billboard campaign to attract passengers to Burbank.

"We have marketed ourselves as a convenient alternative to Los Angeles Airport. We are easier to get to and this year we have added parking facilities which makes us even easier to use," said Mixsell.

But the problem at Burbank is limited service. Nonstop direct flights to major business cities like Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta and New York are not available from the airport, even though in the past there was such service, particularly to Chicago.

The lack of service to those cities clearly hurts the facility and prevents it from becoming a major airport, which is something that many valley residents oppose anyway.

"We would clearly like to have service to those cities and we are also trying to get add destinations and airlines but right now the airline business is depressed and no carriers are expanding or adding service. If anything, they are cutting back. Look at how many airlines have filed for bankruptcy," said Mixsell.

The issue of expansion of the airport is a controversial and important one, especially considering the expected growth at LAX and plans to add terminal buildings at that facility.

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, the public agency that owns the airport, wants to build a new main terminal building to replace the current one that includes the flight tower. The tower, the authority says, is outdated and too close to the aircraft taxiways. The authority wants to build a new terminal building and tower facility on 100 acres of land now owned by Lockheed and estimates the project will cost between $200 and $250 million.

"They have been wanting to build a new terminal for eight or nine years now but there have been lawsuits stopping the plans," said Richard Close, an attorney who is president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and an opponent of airport expansion since 1975.

"They (the authority) says the tower is too close to the airplanes. If that is true then they have been operating an unsafe airport for a long time," he said.

He said the real reason for a new terminal/ tower facility is to expand the passenger capacity of the airport. "We are opposed to that. The airport is already at capacity. There are homes surrounding the airport and a school on one side. No maatter which direction they come from, the planes pass over homes. The valley is not the place for airport expansion."