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Ontario has accused the airport’s owner, the city of Los Angeles, of ignoring the property and has sued to get control of the facility. Meanwhile, passenger traffic is creeping up slowly, although critics say that increase doesn’t mean much.
After several years of court hearings, requests for documents and back-and-forth accusations between Ontario and Los Angeles, the battle over who should control Ontario International Airport is finally going to trial.
Ontario’s lawsuit that seeks to wrest control of the airport away from Los Angeles World Airports is scheduled to go to trial Aug. 17 before Judge Gloria Connor Trask in Riverside County Superior Court.
Los Angeles World Airports, better known by its acronym LAWA, is an agency of the city of Los Angeles. LAWA also owns and operates Los Angeles International Airport.
For years, who owned Ontario International was not an issue. The airport performed well, operating as a convenient alternative to Los Angeles International, especially for anyone who lived in the Inland Empire or San Gabriel Valley. It even added a second terminal in 1998.
But things began to turn sour in 2007, the year the recession hit. Passenger began to drop, and even though the airport is on a streak of monthly gains in travelers recently, the drop in passenger during the past eight years has been horrific, from 7.2 million a year to four million, roughly a 40 percent drop, according to LAWA.
Why that drop in passenger traffic happened depends on whose version of events you choose to believe.
LAWA officials say the recession is to blame: the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression started in late 2008, soon got much worse and is only now starting to improve, and people simply stopped traveling.
Not so, says the city of Ontario and everyone else in the Inland Empire that wants to see Ontario International reach its maximum potential. Faced with the fallout from the Great Recession, LAWA deliberately began shifting money and resources away from Ontario International and poured them into Los Angeles International, which the agency believed to be the more prestigious and potentially lucrative of the two properties.
Whatever the cause, the result has been levels of passenger traffic at Ontario International not seen since the mid-1980s.
“Anyone following Southern California airport conditions over the past five years can only conclude that as long as Ontario International Airport’s fate lies within Los Angeles’ control, the airport’s condition will continue to deteriorate to the detriment of the entire region,” Ontario Councilman Alan D. Wapner said in a statement two years ago, when Ontario filed suit against Los Angeles.
Ontario officials declined to be interviewed for this story.
However, the region’s best-known economist said nothing has changed since Wapner released that statement.
“We absolutely have to get the airport out of LAWA’s hands,” said John Husing, a fierce critic of LAWA’s management of LAWA’s management of Ontario International. “The airport isn’t performing at a level anywhere near where it should be, and that is making it more difficult to conduct business in the Inland Empire. It’s a direct threat to our economy.”
Husing, a Redlands resident, laments that he often must travel to Los Angeles International to get a flight to the east coast, or land in Los Angeles if he is returning from that part of the country.
Frank Williams, former executive director of the Ontario Airport Alliance, says he has the same problem now that he has retired and moved to Florida.
“I should be able to fly from Jacksonville or Miami to Ontario, but I can’t,” Williams said.
The legal wrangling between Ontario and Los Angeles began in late 2012, when Ontario offered to buy the airport for $246 million, a proposal the Los Angeles City Council rejected.
In April 2013, Ontario filed a legal claim that sought transfer of ownership of the airport, a proposal that was also turned down by the council.
Since then there have been hearings on which documents each side is obligated to show the other, a back-and-forth between consultants regarding how much the airport is worth and legislation introduced in Sacramento that would help finance the transfer of the airport should such an agreement be reached.
Because Ontario International is in San Bernardino County and Ontario’s lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County, the trial is being held on neutral turf, said an attorney connected with the case.
“Both sides have been working hard preparing for this trial, but I don’t want to speculate on how it might turn out,” said the attorney, who agreed to comment only if his name was not reported.
The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks, the attorney said.
While both sides have been moving closer to going to court, Ontario International has been making a modest comeback with its passenger counts. Starting in June of last year, the airport has recorded a year-over-year increase in passenger traffic every month except January, when traffic fell 0.2 percent.
Much of that improvement has happened in international travel.
Volaris and AeroMexico operate 14 flights a week from Ontario International to Guadalajara and Mexico City, and those flights are helping to bolster the airport’s passenger count. International passenger traffic rose 73 percent year-over-year in June, according to LAWA.
By themselves, the international numbers don’t explain why passenger traffic is improving at Ontario International, said Maria Tesoro, airport spokeswoman.
“The economy is doing better and people are traveling more,” Tesoro said. “That’s probably the most important factor. But we do expect the international numbers to keep getting stronger.”
Husing, for one, is not impressed.
“The numbers are down so far, and they’re starting from such a small base that I don’t think it means that much,” Husing said.
Williams, who said he still follows the battle over who will run Ontario International, was slightly more enthusiastic about the improved passenger numbers.
“I think any increase in passenger traffic is good,” Williams said. “But what they have so far isn’t nearly enough.”
