Ontario Airport on Pace to Top 7 Million Passengers for the First Time

Aug. 17–The complexity of expanding Ontario International Airport to meet Southern California’s future passenger needs delayed a series of environmental reviews by about a year.

The reports were expected this summer, but won’t be finished until the middle of 2006 at the earliest, said Maria Tesoro-Fermin, a spokeswoman for the airport.

Tesoro-Fermin said the additional year won’t likely impact the airport’s planned expansion.

Ontario International Airport’s twin terminals were built to accommodate a total of 10 million passengers. Once the airport hits that figure in consecutive years, the master plan calls for the construction of a third terminal. The environmental reviews would need to be done by that point.

The airport this year is on pace to top 7 million passengers for the first time. Based on the growth rate of the past few years, passenger volumes would not reach 10 million until sometime in the next decade.

Despite the slower-than-anticipated growth — initial forecasts predicted the airport would have topped 10 million passengers by now — observers say there’s no danger of Ontario failing to become a major airport in the long term.

Southern California Associated Governments, a transportation-planning group made up of six counties in the region, has only slightly revised its estimates for the airport. The group expects Ontario to reach its projected capacity of 30 million passengers in 2030 rather than 2025.

Jeff Lustgarten, a spokesman for the group, said SCAG shifted its forecast after 9 /11 cut down air-travel growth for two years. That event was somewhat counterbalanced by Orange County voters’ decision to derail prospects for commercial aviation at El Toro Air Base in Santa Ana.

Ron Kuhlmann, an aviation analyst with industry consultant Unisys R2A in Oakland, said Ontario airport managers are correctly preparing for growth well ahead of need.

“It’s almost impossible to overbuild airport capacity in Southern California,” Kuhlmann said.

“I don’t think there’s ever a time when you would want to say that you’re not going to need it,” he said.

Kuhlmann said growth limits at virtually every other airport in the region assure Ontario’s growth.

“There has been a lot of turmoil in the industry, and certainly 9 /11 shook a lot of projections,” he said. “But in the LA basin, you’re one of the very few places that can handle growth in the future.”

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