Will Search for a New Airport Get Off Ground After Years of Debate?

For San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts, the PSA crash 10 years ago is not just a footnote to local history.

Instead, it gives him an ominous feeling. If something isn’t done about Lindbergh Field--where the landing skills of pilots are sorely tested by the terrain and the protruding downtown skyline--there could be another air disaster as devastating as the one that rocked San Diego a decade ago, he believes.

“The margin of safety is far less than at any other airport in the country,” said Roberts, whose council district encompasses Lindbergh and the noise-afflicted neighborhoods around it. “And here we are, bringing in major air traffic over a densely populated area. It doesn’t make sense.”

Nagged by this specter, as well as other problems with Lindbergh, Roberts and a number of other local officials are reviving a question that faced San Diego even before the fiery PSA crash brought it into tragic focus:

Should San Diego find a new place for its commercial airport?

Although the location of the airport was not a factor in the PSA crash, the tragedy crystallized the argument to abandon the city’s tiny, 471-acre center-city airport because of fears that another mishap would send an airliner hurtling into yet another San Diego neighborhood.

“I’m sure this will excite the debate again,” said Mayor Pete Wilson after touring the PSA wreckage the day of the crash. “We will be compelled to look at other sites . . . .”

Yet even the emotion surrounding the PSA crash--at the time the worst air disaster in the United States--did little to move the airport. As it happened many times before, a government study was performed and the idea of forsaking Lindbergh was put on the shelf.

A decade later, however, Roberts believes that San Diego--more particularly, its business community--may be experiencing a change of heart.

Not only are there renewed worries about airline safety at Lindbergh, but also the 60-year-old, land-locked airport is straining under the demands of the region’s explosive growth in population and air passengers.

“Unless San Diego is going to start shrinking in population, I don’t think we can continue to have the airport at Lindbergh,” said Louis Wolfsheimer, a member of the San Diego Unified Port Commission, which oversees the airport because it sits on port property.

“We’ve got to find a new place for this airport,” he said.

The latest stirrings in the Lindbergh debate come on the eve of a $350,000 federally-funded study to search for a new site for a commercial airport. The study, paid for by the Federal Aviation Administration and conducted by the San Diego Assn. of Governments, was jointly requested by the city and the port district.

It will be the third comprehensive effort by Sandag to grapple with the thorny issue of what to do with Lindbergh. The last attempt, completed in 1981, suggested moving the airport to Miramar Naval Air Station--a proposal that, although popular, never went anywhere.

Some are already predicting the same fate for the current study.

“You’re at a point now that none of the alternatives are very good,” said Mike Madigan, vice president of Pardee Construction Co.

“Whatever opportunities San Diego had to really solve its airport questions in a graceful manner went by the boards some time ago,” Madigan said.

Added Lindbergh manager Maurice (Bud) McDonald: “There has been a movement at one time or another--I guess for the last 30 years or more--to move the airport. That’s just a subject that comes up periodically.

“I think it has a lot to do with who is in office at the time. I don’t mean that sarcastically. I mean that if you’re a legislator and your constituents are impacted by noise or they’re afraid of an airplane falling on them, and they come to you for succor, then you better tell them something like, ‘We’re going to move the airport,’ ” said McDonald, a staunch believer that the talk of Lindbergh’s problems is exaggerated.

Built on Mud Flats

Over the years, there have been many suggested alternatives to Lindbergh, which was built in the 1920s by pouring fill dirt on the mud flats of San Diego Bay.

One idea called for an airport in San Diego Bay. Another suggested constructing runways in the east San Diego County desert. A third designated the rolling hills of Carmel Valley. These ideas were too expensive or too impractical.

During Wilson’s early tenure, the politically powerful mayor convinced the City Council to give serious consideration to moving the airport to city-owned Brown Field. But Wilson lost the battle at the Comprehensive Planning Organization, Sandag’s predecessor organization, and the momentum to replace Lindbergh was lost.

“It was the most unpopular thing I did in my life,” Wilson, now a U.S. Senator, said during a recent campaign stop in San Diego. “Ninety percent of the citizens found it (Lindbergh) so convenient they didn’t want it moved.

“There were people who voted for me for reelection (as mayor) who said, ‘You’ve done a good job and I’m voting for you in spite of your idiot position on the airport,’ ” said Wilson.

Four months after Wilson lost the battle over Brown Field, PSA Flight 182 went down in North Park, igniting the debate once again.

The result: Sandag’s second comprehensive study, which concluded in 1981 that the best choice for a new airport was Miramar Naval Air Station. But the Navy, worried about effects of such a plan on its jet fighter training schedules, has emphatically refused to consider sharing a portion of the 15,400-acre base with commercial airliners.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor for years has downplayed any talk of moving Lindbergh, telling questioners during her mayoral campaigns that any further debate of the issue is wasting time. Since there is no clear alternative, and any other site would probably cost billions of dollars, Lindbergh has become San Diego’s de facto airport for the foreseeable future, she said.

Now O’Connor believes discussion about relocating the airport is on the “front burner” and must be resolved. “It’s not going to go away,” she said.

Even with the new urgency, there are good reasons to consider holding onto the airport as the county’s hub of commercial aviation, say Lindbergh supporters. Those reasons include:

* Lindbergh is convenient, especially for the business traveler who can leave his office downtown and drive a short distance down Harbor Drive to hop a jet. For tourists flying into San Diego, Lindbergh is close to downtown hotels. And moving the airport would create a big disruption to the community.

* The airport makes money. With only $14 million in bonds outstanding, Lindbergh made $15 million last year for the port.

* Despite years of attempts, no satisfactory alternative to Lindbergh has been found. Although some suggestions have been mentioned prominently--such as shared use with Miramar or an international airport at the border--their difficulties have effectively stalled any action. In short, moving the airport is a problem that resists solution.

Madigan, who as a resident of the Banker’s Hill neighborhood north of downtown has been in the Lindbergh flight path for 23 years, said he is firmly for keeping the center-city airport, despite the fact that he worked to have it moved 10 years ago as an aide to Wilson.

He contends that Lindbergh’s life-span can be extended. Traffic congestion leading to the airport terminals can be alleviated by putting a light-rail line into Lindbergh and the number of airplanes using Lindbergh’s single runway could be decreased if San Diegans had the option of riding a high-speed Metroliner service to Los Angeles, the first stop for many jets leaving the airport.

“It really requires a systematic approach,” said Madigan. “It requires doing several lesser things, rather than a giant plan.”

Will Continue to Operate

Even if commercial jet service is moved from Lindbergh, adds Port District Director Don Nay, the airport probably will not shut down altogether. The Convair and Teledyne Ryan plants adjacent to Lindbergh have port leases guaranteeing access to the runway for 50 more years, Nay said.

In addition, Lindbergh will probably stay open for corporate jets, he said.

“It might become a quieter place and a better neighbor if another commercial airport were opened, but I doubt if it (Lindbergh) were to be taken out of general aviation altogether,” Nay said.

Roberts and others advocating relocation, however, are contemplating the complete closure of Lindbergh, and the Sandag study is proceeding with the assumption that the center-city airport will be abandoned.

“There are compelling reasons” for leaving Lindbergh as soon as possible, Roberts said. Among those given by the councilman and others:

* Lindbergh’s runway. There is only one and it is considered short by modern standards. While most airports have at least two runways of 9,000 feet each, the effective length of Lindbergh’s is 7,590 feet.

* Noise and curfew. While the number of quieter, Stage III jets has increased at Lindbergh, the amount of noise generated throughout the nearby neighborhoods is about the same as 10 years ago. Noise considerations have forced the airport to impose a nighttime curfew on flights.

* Safety. The steep descent to Lindbergh’s runway has always been a worry for commercial pilots, who are required by the FAA to receive a special certification before they fly into the airport. And now the construction of high-rise buildings under the flight path has pilots and local politicians warning of the risk of a jumbo jet hitting a structure.

* Capacity. The number of commercial flights and passengers has increased so much in the last decade that driving to the airport, finding a parking space and moving through the terminals has become difficult during peak travel times. Those problems will be compounded when the new waterfront convention center opens.

* Size. Because Lindbergh is 471 acres, there is no room to build a critical second runway; buying developed land nearby would be prohibitively expensive. Planners hope a new airport would be at least 5,000 acres, giving enough room to expand and accommodate the air travel needs of a burgeoning population.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Port Commissioner Wolfsheimer. “It’s a little bandbox of an airport.”

Concerns about capacity has Wolfsheimer and others worried these days, especially because it would take 13 years to plan and build a new airport even if everyone were to agree on a location today.

Meanwhile, Lindbergh is expected to reach capacity by 1995, and already it is feeling the pinch.

In the 10 years since the PSA crash, the county’s population has increased 50%, from 1.8 million to 2.3 million. The number of commercial jet landings and take-offs has jumped 50%--from 84,817 to 127,723 last year--and the number of passengers surging through Lindbergh’s gates has increased 63%--from 6.2 million to 10.1 million last year.

During that period, Lindbergh opened its 217,000-square-foot western terminal. But the extra space has been hard pressed to keep up with the demand, say Wolfsheimer and others.

For the first time, the airport recorded 1 million passengers in two successive months, July and August. Its east terminal, designed to handle 3 million passengers a year, is now accommodating 6 million to 7 million, port figures show.

Traffic on the one street that leads to Lindbergh--North Harbor Drive--is way over its maximum desired capacity. The largest surface street in the city, North Harbor Drive was designed to handle 50,000 cars a day; as of June 1, it was taking 79,400 a day, and 60% of those were headed to Lindbergh, statistics show.

Congestion exists on the Tarmac as well, said Wolfsheimer. “At 11 p.m. at night, there are 50 airplanes parked there and everybody wants to be off first thing in the morning,” he said.

“By the mid-1990s, when that convention center is going to be operating at capacity, that airport is really going to be struggling,” Roberts said.

More Use Studies

The crunch has prompted port officials to commission a series of studies to determine what they can do to maximize Lindbergh’s capacity. The most critical study, due in November, is supposed to pinpoint once and for all the airport’s most limiting feature, whether it is the single runway, parking capacity, apron space or traffic circulation system.

“If you believe there is going to be a long time before a new airport, then the challenge is how do you change the one that you’ve got to serve the people in the most comfortable, efficient way?” said Port Director Nay.

Nay said he considers the jet noise from Lindbergh to be its primary constraint.

“Aircraft are getting quieter, but they are getting more numerous,” Nay said. “The amount of noise is inching up, as measured by the California noise regulations.”

In June, a coalition of homeowners, port officials and representatives of the Navy and Marines--both of which have recruit depots adjacent to Lindbergh--announced a new plan to drastically reduce the number of loud jets used at the airport by 1993. The keystone of the plan, negotiated over six months, calls for the number of take-offs and landings of newer, quieter Stage III aircrafts to be increased from the current 47% to 75% by 1993.

And noise considerations long ago forced the port district to impose a curfew banning flights between 11:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., a constraint that some hope a new airport will be without.

Even with the curfew and an increasing number of quiet jets, the port district is facing a round of federal lawsuits from angry homeowners who want $200 million in damages because of alleged property losses due to airplane noise.

Other changes are being suggested to maximize Lindbergh’s capacity: A new parking structure. Open up a second entrance to the airport from the north, off Washington Street. Install a people-moving system that would take travelers from Pacific Highway to the existing terminals via a tunnel under the runway. Build a new terminal on the northern edge of the airport. Move the current fuel farm and airplane food service operations from their Harbor Drive location to the other side of the airport.

Worries about how Lindbergh’s limited capacity, meanwhile, has helped coalesce political support for moving the airport, especially among the city’s business community, Roberts said. The councilman said he’s seen an increased willingness by local business leaders within the last year to look elsewhere.

Dorothy Migdal, Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce vice president for local government, said the business community “has felt some urgency for some time” about looking for another airport, but it is “hard to come up with a solution.”

“We have always felt there were great limitations on development in San Diego with the airport being as constricted as Lindbergh is,” Migdal said. “You have a single runway that is short, compared to others. Some planes can’t even get into here, if they are fully loaded, and they can’t get out if they are fully loaded.”

While planes leaving Lindbergh can go directly to Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua or Panama, Nay said, they must stop at Los Angeles for additional fuel to reach destinations in Tokyo and London.

The inability to travel non-stop to foreign cities, especially those in the Pacific Rim, will relegate San Diego to a “minor role” in the Pacific region’s developing economy, argues Roberts.

Safety Worries

Lately, however, the economic concerns about Lindbergh’s limited capacity have been overshadowed by public worries about the safety of airliners, in particular jumbo jets, descending on the airport.

Landing at Lindbergh has always been a challenge to pilots, and the FAA has designated it as one of 15 airports--including National Airport in Washington D.C. and Hong Kong International--where pilots must undergo special certification before attempting their first landing.

The reason Lindbergh is on the list is because of the steep terrain surrounding it, said Dick Russell, a United Airlines pilot and area safety coordinator for the Los Angeles chapter of the Air Line Pilots Assn.

Instead of cruising in what is considered a normal 3-degree angle to the runway, the hills around Lindbergh require a pilot to bring his aircraft in at a steeper, 4-degree angle.

And once the pilot is about to touch down, he is prevented from using the full length of Lindbergh’s 9,400-foot runway. The “displaced threshold,” imposed on the airport by the FAA in 1968, requires him to set his wheels down at least 1,810 feet from the start of the runway, effectively cutting the stretch of useable concrete to 7,590 feet. Most airports have a runway minimum of 9,000 feet, said Russell.

In addition, pilots must try to land their airplanes at Lindbergh in the quietest way possible by cutting the power, flaring the nose in the air and gliding in at a speed that is about 10 knots greater than normal, Russell said. The result: A plane landing at Lindbergh is falling at 1,500 feet a minute, about 500 feet a minute more than recommended by flight manuals.

And that’s when the short runway becomes a crucial factor, he said.

“For every knot that you increase over your normal minimum, that puts you at a greater distance down the runway,” he said. “And your stopping can be critical, especially on a wet runway.”

Overall, he said, it is like “landing in a shoe box,” and sometimes the quick descent will trigger an airplane’s Ground Proximity Warning Device, which sounds an alarm if it detects the airplane is falling too fast.

“It comes on with a mechanical voice and says, ‘Pull up! Pull up!’ ” Russell said. “Many times a pilot will get that coming into San Diego. We are obligated to pull up when you hear that, but not in San Diego.”

More alarm has been triggered by the construction of the Laurel Travel Center, a six-story parking garage. The center reaches 93.9 feet above sea level and is located 710 feet from the end of the runway.

Even before it was opened for business in 1986, the travel center caused a stir. The FAA classified it as an “obstacle” and approved it for construction in 1984.

Surprised by Building

Roberts, who was then chairman of the city’s planning commission, said the first time he knew about the building was when he drove by and noticed someone had put in the first floor.

“When they put in the second floor, I said, ‘That’s the right height,’ ” Roberts recalled. “When they put in the third floor, I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ ”

An incensed Roberts called a series of special planning commission meetings in 1985 to investigate why the building never required approval by the City Council or its appointees.

What Roberts found was a virtual administrative black hole. A 1985 planning department report said the FAA had no legal authority to stop the construction of a building in the flight path. Even if a structure were designated as a “hazard,” the matter would be referred to the California Department of Transportation, but CalTrans officials said they had never heard of such a case in San Diego.

Meanwhile, the city would have virtually no say in the matter because it has not adopted an official height limitation in the flight path. The city attorney’s office told the planning commission that adopting such a restriction would be tantamount to inverse condemnation and expose the city to millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in damages from property owners, Roberts said.

Earlier this year, the Air Line Pilots Assn. sent a seven-page letter to the FAA complaining about the travel center and asking that the building be declared a “hazard”--the agency’s most extreme safety designation--because the structure was an “accident waiting to happen.”

ALPA calculations showed that the landing gear of a 747 wouldn’t clear the structure if the plane were descending into Lindbergh at the minimal angle provided by the airport’s visual landing guidance system. “the wheels of an L-1011 would clear the garage by only 1.8 feet and a DC-10 by 3.8 feet.

The FAA was forced to upgrade the landing guidance system. And in July, it issued a letter agreeing with the pilots’ calculations.

But the agency refused to declare the travel center a “hazard,” a decision that angered local officials. “I think people’s lives are at risk with that thing,” Wolfsheimer said at the time.

So does Roberts, who has since been elected to City Council.

“I wouldn’t allow anyone in my family or myself to come in on a 747,” the councilman declared at s council meeting last week.

Roberts and his staff say they are worried about the “Stonehenge” effect that would be created for in-coming aircraft by at least seven other high-rise buildings that are proposed for construction in Lindbergh’s flight path.

Last Monday, Roberts urged his council colleagues and City Atty. John Witt to seek outside legal advise to stop the proliferation of buildings under the flight path.

The councilman also says he wants to put the brakes on development by not giving final approval for residential construction around Brown Field, just in case the border airport gets the nod from the Sandag study. The delay is causing chagrin in the offices of Pardee, which bought up 800 acres on the western edge of Brown Field the last time the city airfield was eliminated from consideration as a replacement for Lindbergh.

Preliminary discussions at Sandag, however, indicate that Brown Field--or a location on the Otay Mesa--may be making a comeback. And there is always strong interest in somehow securing a piece of Miramar, despite the Navy’s intransigence.

But the strongest message is that something, finally, must be done.

At a meeting last month of the policy committee advising Sandag on its airport study, Port Commission Raymond Burk of Coronado said he couldn’t “emphasize enough the urgency that is on us.

“I would hate to see the result of this being, ‘Ho hum, we couldn’t find an airport site’ and then the study sits around on a shelf and gathers dust,” said Burk. “We have to find a replacement.”