Cities may step into the void to broker deal at Burbank Airport. (Up Front).

The saga over building a new terminal for Burbank Airport is far from over.

The Burbank Airport Authority voted earlier this month to abandon the terminal effort after years of public opposition, and airport commissioners essentially punted the political hot potato to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has the power to order a solution.

They also gave an opening to the three cities with jurisdiction over the airport -- Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena -- to try to come to an agreement on their own.

"This is not over by a long shot," said Peter Kirsch, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld LLP who represents the city of Burbank on airport matters. "In fact, the Authority's frustration could end up jump-starting the three cities' efforts to reach an agreement."

To that end, two Burbank city councilmembers tried to convince the Glendale City Council last week to stay the course in building a new terminal. A joint meeting of the Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena city councils is planned for Dec. 4.

Meanwhile, Burbank Airport Commission President and Pasadena City Councilman Chris Holden sent a letter to the FAA calling on the agency to comment publicly on how high a priority it places on moving the terminal.

FAA western Pacific region spokesman Jerry Snyder said the agency's Washington headquarters is reviewing the Burbank situation. "We will come out with specific guidance from Washington in response to this letter," Snyder said. He provided no time frame.

The FAA has the authority to force the building of a new terminal on grounds that the 300-foot distance between the east-west runway and the terminal does not meet the agency's safety guideline of 750 feet. FAA officials could shut down the part of the runway that's inside the safety guideline, thereby preventing larger planes from using the airport. And the FAA could conceivably condemn some land and build a new terminal itself.

But Snyder said the terminal is not in violation since it was grandfathered in before the guideline took effect. That, along with a widely perceived reluctance on the part of the agency to impose solutions on locally run airports, leads many to suspect that regulators will not forcefully step in.

"The FAA has a record of not wanting to be intrusive in local decision-making," said Victor Gill, spokesman for the Burbank Airport Authority.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, who represents the airport area, has met with both the FAA and representatives from the three cities in recent months in an attempt to broker a deal. "I do think there is an opportunity here to reach an agreement, although it's a small and closing window," Schiff said.

Key to reaching a deal, he said, will be the ability of all participants to agree on everything but the airport curfew. "If we can get consensus on everything else and thereby demonstrate to the FAA that this is the only missing element, I think we can get the FAA to move on the curfew issue."

Most recently, Burbank -- prompted by a voter-approved referendum last year -- has insisted on the imposition of a 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew on flights, something that the FAA has been highly reluctant to grant at other urban airports.

Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and even Los Angeles have sparred with each other and the airport authority repeatedly over whether to build a new terminal to replace the current 70-year-old facility. Plans had called for the building of a terminal on a 130-acre parcel the authority purchased from Lockheed Martin Corp. in 1999.

Burbank Airport spokesman Gill said that even with the existing terminal, the airport can grow at 2 percent a year, to 7 million annual passengers a year by 2015, below the 9 million the Southern California Association of Governments is pushing as part of its regional air travel policy.

The existing terminal handles 4.5 million passengers a year through 14 gates; the new terminal initially would have the same number of gates but would have the ability to expand to 19 gates.

Currently, about half the passenger traffic at Burbank is business-related, driven in part by the concentration of entertainment and media companies in the Burbank-Glendale area.

"There is now tremendous pressure being placed on Burbank Airport with the apparent downsizing of Los Angeles International Airport's share of the regional traffic" said Stephen Erie, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.

Steady

Burbank Airport is straining in old facility.

Year Opened: 1930

Passenger Count, 2001: 4.5 million

Percent business travelers: 50 percent

                    Passengers *     Percent
Airlines            Jan.-Sept. 2002  of total

Southwest Airlines  2,386            69%
United Airlines       353             10
Alaska Airlines       307              9
America West          211              6
American              165              5
Aloha                  22              0.6

* thousands

Source: Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority