Two important developments at John Wayne Airport this week:
Kudos to Airport Director Alan Murphy and his staff for bringing in this business. With the theft of El Toro from us, and the ongoing — let’s really say perpetual — economic loss to the County that created, it’s encouraging that someone’s been able to sell something that will create some revenue from our only remaining commercial airport, and particularly since the County’s not being overwhelmed by property tax revenue from all those homes that aren’t being built around the Great Park.
With JWA’s passenger caps finally increasing next year (and hopefully going away in 2015), and a new terminal planned, this is good news — not as good as having a job-creating, tax- and fee-generating, parking revenue-producing and economy-stimulating international passenger and cargo airport at the intersection of two major freeways and next to a Metrolink/Amtrak train station would have been, but it’s better than nothing.
With the runway limited by two freeways, and the noise abatement issues, I don’t think much can be done to expand JWA.
Unfortunately, the short-sighted politicians in Irvine and further south shot themselves in the feet by preventing an airport at El Toro.
Instead, they got balloon rides…
And they managed to even screw that up:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/29/local/me-balloon29
I believe the runway could be extended, but probably not by much. The issue is that it’s not long enough to accommodate heavier, faster wide bodies. If memory serves, the largest planes JWA can handle are Boeing 757s and Airbus A320s. Way back in the PSA days, they did handle 727s.