CONSULTANT HIRED TO DEVELOP PLAN FOR PALMDALE AIRPORT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A consultant was hired Wednesday to analyze the demand for air travel out of the city and to develop a master plan for the Palmdale Regional Airport.

By a 6-0 vote, the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners hired URS Corp. to draft the plan, part of a large scale effort to ease the demand on LAX.

``This is a huge step,'' said David Myers, executive director of the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance. ``The master plan is required by law to allow LAWA to invest in that facility,''

The master plan also will be a tool that can be used in marketing the airport, Myers said. Palmdale hasn't had airline service for four years.

< Operated by the Los Angeles airports department, the Palmdale airport has a terminal building and land leased at Air Force Plant 42.

The city of Los Angeles also owns 17,750 acres that it began buying east of Plant 42 in 1970 for a future airport, which has never been developed.

Much of the local effort over the past two years has focused on trying to attract airline service at Plant 42, rather than on trying to develop a new airport. Under an agreement with the Air Force, Plant 42 can be used by civilian airlines offering as many as 400 flights a day at the site.

Commuter airlines United Express, America West and SkyWest operated out of Palmdale in the 1990s - sometimes two airlines at a time. United Express, the last commercial carrier at the site, pulled out of Palmdale in February 1998.

Passenger volume was greatest in 1990, the year both America West and SkyWest started service after a five-year lapse in Palmdale airline flights. Passengers traveling through the Palmdale terminal numbered more than 48,500 in 1990, but the number dwindled to fewer than 19,400 by 1997.

The master plan is expected to incorporate previous plans for such things as a cargo pad, an eastward extension of Avenue P-8 and a marketing campaign.