An Endless Holding Pattern

It’s a Friday evening at the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport. Two flights are running late because of bad weather in northern California, so three flights’ worth of departing passengers and people waiting to greet arriving passengers are crowded together at a single gate.

The waiting area has 54 hard plastic chairs. They are all taken. About 20 people sit on the floor, propped against carry-on bags, walls and windows. At least that many more are standing. The corridor is clogged and patrons spill out of the one tiny bar.

One plane lands, and the ticket taker behind the check-in counter shouts out the flight number, but it’s impossible to hear over the din. There is no intercom. There are no TV monitors to check new arrival or departure times. To ask at the counter means standing in line--again.

As arriving passengers climb down from the plane and walk across the tarmac in the rain, departing passengers surge forward, hoping this is the right plane.

And people actually want to stop plans to build a larger airport terminal?

If a larger terminal is built, more people will come, goes the thinking of those Burbank and east San Fernando Valley residents who, apparently, haven’t used the Burbank Airport since the Pleistocene age. If they had, they would know that more people have already come. They are not waiting for a new terminal. They are packed like sardines into the old one.

People who like the Burbank Airport the way it is cite its convenience. It’s so easy to get in and out of, they say.

No, it’s not convenient. Or fast. Or comfortable. Or, given the distance from the terminal to the runway, as safe as it should be.

Nearby residents, Burbank leaders, airport officials, the airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration have been squabbling over a new terminal for 20 years. Last August, Burbank officials and the tri-city authority that operates the airport surprised everyone by coming up with a compromise agreement.

The proposed new terminal would have more room for waiting areas, coffee shops and other amenities and be built at a safer distance from the runway. It would have the same number of gates as the old terminal, a major victory for those opposing airport expansion.

But details remain to be worked out, and the tentative agreement could fall apart if two deadlines aren’t met or extended. Under the terms of the agreement, the Burbank City Council must formally approve the project by May 24 or the land set aside for the new terminal could be sold. A second deadline, set by the FAA two years ago, calls for the airport to have building plans and construction permits in hand by December or risk forfeiting $84.5 million generated by an FAA-authorized ticket tax.

So are all sides working to meet the deadlines? Incredibly, no. Airport opponents continue to try to kill the plan by arguing for a curfew, never mind that the FAA has said neither Burbank nor airport officials can impose a curfew unilaterally.

For its part, the Air Transport Assn., an industry group representing the airlines, is content to let the agreement die because its members don’t like the gate limit and noise restrictions. So they like the alternative--a crowded, unworkable terminal?

Local congressmen and other politicians who should be doing all they can to encourage negotiations are instead clinging to pet demands or, in the case of Burbank City Councilman Bob Kramer, backing out of the agreement altogether. Some leadership.

As for the FAA’s guidance, its spokespersons can’t even agree on whether its deadline can be extended beyond December. One told a Times reporter maybe yes, another, maybe no.

Maybe the only way to reach a compromise is to put all these warring parties into one room and not let them come out until they agree on a plan. We have just the room in mind: the Burbank Airport terminal on a rainy Friday evening.