For those who are local here in Southern California, next Wednesday October 12 is the next quarterly meeting for the Long Beach Aviation Friends group. The meeting starts at 630p at AirFlite (3250 Airflite Way, Long Beach, CA 90807). You should come. Seriously. If you read this blog, then you’re a dork like me. Come on out.

For those who aren’t familiar with the group (and that’s probably just about every single one of you), the goals are to inform people of the history of aviation and the Long Beach Airport, to keep people informed on the airport status, and to assist the airport (tour guides, Ambassadors, archivists, volunteers for city fairs, airport open houses, etc.) (You don’t have to be a volunteer just to come to the meetings.)

This meeting will focus on the first transcontinental flight in the US operated by Cal Rodgers on his airplane, the Vin Fiz. It’s the 100th anniversary and there have been a lot of different events to mark it here in Long Beach, the endpoint of his trip. We’ll have Councilwoman and historian Gerrie Schipske come to talk about the flight in detail. It’s actually quite remarkable since he crashed so many times that it was effectively a different airplane by the time he got to California.

This is my first meeting as “Chief Pilot” (or president) of the group, so if you come, be gentle. Even if this particular event doesn’t interest you, please send me any ideas you have for future programs. We’re working on all sorts of ideas for future programs, which are always the second Wednesday in January, April, July, and October.

Dues are only $12 if you’d like to join, but you don’t have to join just to come to check out a meeting. So come on by and say hello.

When I saw JetBlue announce it was moving its flight to Ft Lauderdale from Long Beach to LAX, I wasn’t surprised. It was just one more step in the effort to move long hauls away from Long Beach and into LAX. Looking back at JetBlue’s nearly 10 years in Long Beach, you can see how stark the change has been. Long Beach serves a very different role now than it did originally for the airline.

JetBlue doesn’t do much flying in the middle of the country, so it’s no surprise to see very little of that type of flying happening in Long Beach. But it is surprising to see how few long hauls are left at the airport.

From Long Beach, JetBlue originally started with flights to New York in September 2001 and followed with Washington soon after. One year after starting at Long Beach, the first short haul began up to Oakland. But long hauls still remained the focus and didn’t start to really go away until early 2008.

Since that time, the drop in long haul flying has been dramatic. Here’s another way to look at it. Look at the number of daily departures from Long Beach to New York.

At one time, JetBlue flew eight daily flights between the two cities. That’s just unreal. It’s now down to just two daily, and at times even that second daily flight doesn’t run every day. Meanwhile, in June 2009, JetBlue started flying to LAX. Today, there are three flights most days from LAX to JFK and that number will rise to five daily this summer.

So what’s the story? When JetBlue started at Long Beach, people were willing to drive for the low fares, live television, and great service. But that’s because low fare, long haul trips were few and far between at LAX. JetBlue chose Long Beach for its lower costs and lack of competition. Today, things are very different.

Low fare service has gone into primary airports across the board. In the LA-New York market, Song showed up in 2005 before being merged back in to Delta. Now, Virgin America is the prime provider of low cost service to New York along with JetBlue (and a bunch of connecting options). The point is, people who prefer LAX do not have to drive to an alternate airport to get low fares anymore. So that changes the math at Long Beach.

JetBlue realized that with people not having to drive to Long Beach to get low fares, long haul flights wouldn’t be as lucrative down there. Besides, people coming from far away didn’t even know Long Beach and had a strong preference for LAX anyway. It moved into LAX in order to keep the traffic that used to be willing to go to Long Beach. But short haul is different.

Those who are traveling on shorter flights are less willing to drive to airports that are further away. So people that live in the heavily-populated area around Long Beach will drive to LAX if they’re going to New York, but they’re less likely to do it if it’s just a jaunt to Vegas or San Francisco. So JetBlue has repositioned Long Beach as a short haul-focused operation serving that community. Low fares are good, but it’s the convenience of the airport that makes it work best.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Long Beach couldn’t support any long haul flights, but JetBlue has to make a choice. Since Long Beach is heavily slot-restricted, JetBlue has to use its 30 daily flights in the best way possible. Considering the current dynamics in the industry, it decided that short haul is the way to go, so long haul will continue to migrate up the road to LAX.

Moving this Ft Lauderdale flight allows JetBlue to add yet another flight to Vegas. Apparently, JetBlue sees enough business traffic potential in this market that it is creating a business-type schedule instead of the afternoon-only leisure schedule that used to be in the market.

Yes, this is partially a response to Allegiant (JetBlue’s network planning chief tells me that the airline “competes hard”) but it’s also an effort to optimize its slots. And these days, short haul flying is far more optimal for secondary airports.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my hometown airport here in Long Beach, so how about an update? The good news is that things are actually moving along quite nicely. Yesterday, they broke ground on the new parking structure and today, I’ve got preliminary plans for the new terminal. It’s fantastic to see so much progress since my interview with JetBlue CEO Dave Barger back in March set off a local firestorm.

The rain was nice enough to hold off yesterday and we ended up having a beautiful day for a groundbreaking. It may be hard to get excited about a parking structure, but this is incredibly important in Long Beach. The current parking setup isn’t sustainable, primarily because the long term lot is leased from Boeing. They’re trying to sell it, and when that happens, the airport will eventually lose the use of that lot. So, more parking was required. The easiest way to do that? Build a garage on the existing surface lots. When it’s done, all Long Beach airport parking will be within walking distance of the terminals. Here’s how it’s going to look from above.

That odd-looking structure in the middle is the new one, and it will be done by the end of summer 2011. (The terminal is on the left end.) Why is it shaped like that? They wanted to keep the lines of sight open toward the terminal as people come into the airport. Ok, fine. I’m just glad to see it happening.

Airport Director Mario Rodriguez said just a few months ago that he hoped to break ground by the end of this year. Sure enough, he did. Yesterday’s event was like most groundbreakings, lots of smiles and pats on the back for getting to this point. I was actually quite surprised by the turnout (at left). There were a lot of people there, as you can see, including some unlikely surprises. Perennial anti-airport activist Joe Sopo was there, and he even held a shovel for a photo opp. I don’t get it.

There were speeches given by several people including Mayor Bob Foster, Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske, Mario Rodriguez, JetBlue’s SVP of Government Affairs Rob Land, and other local business leaders. Most people were praising Mario for his efforts in finally making this happen after years of waiting. Only Gerrie Schipske had a different message – she wanted everyone to know that the city council has been doing things right all along. Lots of confused looks in the audience at that message.

I spoke with JetBlue’s Rob Land after the ceremony and he simply reiterated the airline’s commitment to Long Beach. They’re very pleased to see things moving along, and they had a pretty large turnout of crewmembers to show their support.

Now the next hurdle is the terminal. The plan is to break ground by the end of next year. Will it happen? They’re making progress. I’ve gotten my hands on a few sketches of the current design. Here’s what it should look like, assuming the design doesn’t get tweaked too much.

I’ve gone ahead and marked the double wide trailers that are currently on the property. They will both mercifully be ditched, hopefully burned down and forgotten completely. In the new terminal, customers will continue to check-in where they do now in the historic terminal building. Baggage claim will also continue to be outside on both sides where it is now. It’s everything in between that changes.

To go through security, you will walk in the way you used to – through the existing structure which currently has JetBlue security and a gate area along with bathrooms. That whole thing will be converted into a large, single security checkpoint for the entire airport. Hooray.

After, you’ll walk outside into a garden area (in green). From there, you’ll be able to turn left or right to get to the two holdrooms where customers will continue to board via airstairs at ground level. The garden area in the middle will actually have palm trees sticking up, framing the old terminal from the airside. There will be a variety of concessions and restrooms throughout. Pretty nice plan huh?

Sure, I’d like to see it built a little bigger, but this plan maxes out the amount of space that can be used for holdrooms in the environmental impact report. So while they could build the terminal bigger, it wouldn’t really impact the customer.

Overall, I like what’s happening. The ground-breaking yesterday was nice, but I think everyone sees it as an appetizer to next year’s main course groundbreaking on the terminal improvements. That’s when the real party begins.

It’s been awhile since I last wrote about Long Beach, so I thought last week’s Airport Advisory Commission meeting would be a good opportunity for me to bring it up again. Now that the plans for the new terminal (scheduled to break ground next year) and parking garage (scheduled to break ground this year) seem to be underway, the commission turned its eye toward commuter slots.

Long Beach has a strict and convoluted noise ordinance (read the mind-numbing text yourself) that effectively restricts daily scheduled operations to no more than 41 flights on aircraft greater than 75,000 pounds at maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) and no more than 25 flights on aircraft less than 75,000 pounds.

Right now, Long Beach has its full complement of 41 big jet slots filled, 29 of those by JetBlue. Meanwhile, 18 of the 25 commuter slots remain empty. It’s no secret that JetBlue would be happy to fly more from Long Beach if it had the opportunity, but it doesn’t have any airplanes that weigh less than 75,000 pounds. So it’s hamstrung.

This has led the airport to actually go out and actively try to find airlines that are interested in filling those slots. Airport Director Mario Rodriguez said that his team was putting together an analysis on which airlines had the right aircraft and could potentially fill the void and he would report back at the next commission meeting. This isn’t a tough one to narrow down. There’s the outside chance you could get United to fly some regional jets to Denver, but other than that, Horizon is the best bet with their Q400s. Still, they’ve been deferring Q400 deliveries, so clearly they don’t see a big opportunity just yet. You could always try for Frontier subsidiary Lynx as well, but those Q400s aren’t going to make it all the way to Denver.

But all this discussion could be moot if that silly weight limit wasn’t in place. This is a noise ordinance, after all, so why should weights be involved? I got up to ask that question at the commission and nobody had a good answer. It was generally agreed that the weight limit was put in place by the judge during the whole drawn out fight over the ordinance’s adoption, but that it was arbitrary and really not relevant in today’s world.

Yes, at the time this started to be negotiated, regional jets didn’t even exist. Regional airlines were still called commuters and they only flew small props. Even the smallest jet in wide service at that time, the DC-9-10, weighed 90,000 pounds. So somebody probably decided that 75,000 pounds was a good cut off for some reason.

In 1990, the US adopted the Air Noise and Capacity Act which phased out the louder, older Stage II aircraft by the end of the decade. This, however, only applied to aircraft over this magical 75,000 pound limit. So maybe the judge took that 75,000 pound limit and brought it over to the Long Beach noise ordinance.

The problem with that? It’s a noise ordinance, so why would you base it on weight, especially when that Air Noise and Capacity Act actually allows for louder aircraft under 75,000 pounds? Nobody seems to really know why it was set up that way, because all the players who were around at that time are gone from the scene.

Now, of course, the commuter airlines have become regionals, and they fly larger and larger airplanes. The lines has definitely been blurred, especially with Republic’s latest moves, and there’s not really good reason to use weight to separate them out.

For example, the CRJ-700 (70 seater) tops out at 75,000 pounds so it can use the commuter slots. The slightly lengthened CRJ-900, however, cannot. And then there’s the issue of JetBlue’s Embraer 190s. Those planes have an MTOW of well over the limit, but they’re quieter than the CRJ-700s. So why can’t this ordinance by changed to be noise-based? [After getting more information, I have found that the CRJ-700s are actually quieter than the Embraer 190s on departure but not on arrival, so it's a mixed bag. The CRJ-900, however, is quieter than the CRJ-700 across the board and it can't use commuter slots, so my point is still the same.]

Well, the general excuse is the long-loved “slippery slope” argument. If we touch the noise ordinance for this small change, then that opens it up to allow for a million other changes and it could potentially crumble completely. Uh huh, right. Sounds like an excuse to me. But this isn’t the airport’s excuse, because they don’t control this at all. It would be up to the city council to make the change.

I think we’ve all seen how the Long Beach City Council operates, so the chances of this happening are slim these days, but there doesn’t seem to be a good reason not to change it. If the ordinance could be changed to allow the same number of flights but based upon noise instead of weight, it would make the most sense. This would keep noise down in the community as well as help quickly fill those empty slots. Seems like the smart thing to do.

[Updated 7/24 @ 3p to reflect additional noise info about small jets]

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