JWA fee will finance expansion

O.C. supervisor says $4.50 addition to ticket prices is most ‘fiscally conservative’ funding option.Starting in July 2006, passengers flying out of John Wayne Airport can expect a $4.50 boost in their ticket price to pay for $512 million in airport improvements, Orange County supervisors agreed Tuesday.

They nixed an option to charge a $10 fee to the airport’s car rental customers, which at least one supervisor worried would hurt tourism.

Supervisors approved a plan to fund the improvements with about $180 million in cash from airport revenues and reserves, grants and bond sales, and $300 million that would be generated over 15 1/2 years by the passenger facility charge.

“It was not an easy decision for any member of the board,” Supervisor Bill Campbell said. “We ended up thinking this was the fairest and, frankly, most fiscally conservative thing to do to get [the debt] paid off as quickly as possible.”

The Federal Aviation Administration still must approve the charge. That’s likely to happen, Campbell said, because “given the shaky financial condition of the airlines, I think they’d rather see it going straight to the passenger rather than offload more costs to the airlines.”

The improvements will entail building a new terminal with six gates, adding 2,500 parking spaces, replacing one parking structure, adding more valet parking and expanding the area for overnight aircraft parking.

Another option was to raise the fees airlines pay the airport, but Campbell said the costs likely would have been passed on to passengers and airlines would not have been obligated to remove the fee after the airport construction was paid off.

The next step is hiring a project management firm, which will happen in early 2006, airport Director Alan Murphy said. Construction on the airplane parking area will start in summer 2006 and the new terminal will be underway within two years.

The whole project should take about five years. When it’s complete the airport will be equipped to handle 10.8 million passengers per year -- the limit eventually allowed by the legal settlement governing airport operations.

Murphy said about 9.7 million passengers are expected to use John Wayne Airport this year. A cap of 10.3 million annual passengers is in place through 2010, after which the cap goes to 10.8 million passengers through 2015.

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