Idea of a Floating Airport for San Diego Surfaces Again

ENCINITAS -- Forget for a moment all the logistical issues associated with building a massive airport in the Pacific Ocean. The biggest hurdle of all might be selling a skeptical public on the idea.

Would people really be willing to take a 10-mile boat ride on the high seas to catch a plane? Would any politician approve a concept so futuristic that it seems lifted from the script of a bad Kevin Costner movie?

Adam Englund -- an Encinitas lawyer and former actor who has been fixated for decades on the idea of a floating airport -- might be a dreamer but he isn't a fool. Englund understands the obstacles he faces, the odds he is up against, the fact that others before him have promoted the same idea without success.

But San Diego needs a bigger airport, that much seems clear. And what Englund is wondering is this: Does anybody have a better idea?

More than two months after voters rejected a proposition to build a new airport at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Englund remains hard at work, seeking permits, talking to consultants, fiddling with graphics on his laptop, pitching his idea to anyone willing to listen.

It matters little to him, he insists, that the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority has all but rejected the concept. He is undaunted by the various engineering challenges, such as how to cope with fog, large waves, shifting tides and the corrosive properties of seawater.

It's time, he insists, for San Diego -- a community of brilliant scientific minds -- to start thinking outside the box. He notes that several well-regarded scientists, including one of the world's leading oceanographers, think a floating airport is every bit as achievable as putting a man on the moon.

"We are so constrained by the land and yet there's this enormous frontier out there," Englund said.

In some ways, the idea has a simple appeal to it. An off-shore airport wouldn't encroach on any neighborhoods, wouldn't subject anybody's house to foundation-rattling noises. Pilots could land without being forced to navigate around tall buildings and other obstructions.

And the bottom line, proponents argue, is that San Diego appears to have run out of alternatives to the city's current airport, Lindbergh Field, which has one runway.

Englund -- founder and executive director of a company named Euphlotea (pronounced you-flo-tee-uh) -- isn't the first person to pitch the concept to San Diego airport officials. A company named Float Inc., led by San Diego architect and engineer Don Innis, proposed an off-shore airport in the mid-1990s. Innis noted that "everything of any worth in this civilization at one point has never been done before."

Among the experts Innis consulted was Walter Munk, a world-renowned scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. Float Inc. went so far as to patent the design for a giant platform that hovers above the ocean, supported by air. The proposal called for an underwater tunnel that would link the airport to the shore.

Although the group failed to win any converts at the San Diego Regional Airport Authority, Innis and Munk remain convinced their idea was realistic.

"We're not crackpots, and I'm annoyed they didn't take us more seriously," Munk, an expert in oceanography and geophysics, said in a recent interview.

Airport Authority officials insist they've kept an open mind when considering the off-shore airport proposals from Float Inc. and Euphlotea.

Keith Wilschetz, the authority's director of airport systems planning, thinks such an idea actually might be workable in 20, 30, 40 years. But at the moment, Wilschetz notes, the scientific principles still are untested.

Although Japanese engineers have experimented with a floating runway, the world has never seen a floating commercial airport. Given the potential cost of such a project -- perhaps $20 billion -- there are simply too many unknowns, Wilschetz said. For this reason, the authority has rejected the idea, at least for now.

"Maybe it would work on a computer," Wilschetz said. "But do we want to dedicate $20 billion to that risk?"

Englund still harbors hope that someone -- if not the Airport Authority then maybe the Federal Aviation Administration -- will give his plan a serious look, especially now that the Miramar site has been rejected.

Over the years, Englund has spoken with any number of experts, including Frieder Seible, dean of University of California San Diego's school of engineering. Among Seible's other credentials, he served on a panel advising San Francisco airport on a possible project to extend several of its runways into San Francisco Bay. The project is on hold.

"I certainly applaud his efforts because I do think it's something we should explore and think about," Seible said about Englund's proposal.

On a recent morning, Englund, 53, sat down with a reporter at Starbucks in Encinitas to discuss his floating airport. He brought along a laptop computer filled with high-resolution graphics illustrating various elements of his proposal.

The plan calls for a number of ports along the coast as far north as Oceanside, where travelers would be whisked by high-speed watercraft to the airport, which would be perhaps 10 miles off shore. The airport could evolve into a mini-city of sorts, with restaurants, a deep-water port for ships, even housing. The massive platform, Englund insists, could be engineered to remain stable even in the stormiest seas.

Englund is an entertainment lawyer by trade and a former Hollywood actor whose film credits include a bit part in the movie "Texasville." He is not related to actor Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies.

He and his fiancée, Victoria, rent an apartment in Encinitas, where Englund can walk two blocks to the bluffs overlooking the sea. When he looks at the ocean, he sees a new frontier for humanity, which is quickly exhausting its existing resources on land. He has been obsessed with the idea of a giant floating city ever since he worked at an oceanic institute in Hawaii after high school.

"Some people want to be firemen and save people," Englund said. "This has always been my dream."

He believes his biggest obstacle is overcoming the natural human instinct to be skeptical of anything that has never been done before. What's more, people have all sorts of phobias that would come into play -- fear of getting seasick, fear of landing on the equivalent of a humongous aircraft carrier, fear of drowning.

He also will face resistance from those who believe humans have no business trying to develop the ocean. If we build a floating airport, this thinking goes, can floating strip malls be far behind?

Englund says his airport would be nothing more than a thin strip on the horizon off the San Diego coast. He says the environmental impact would be minimal.

This is a workable idea, he insists -- it really is.

"I don't want to be thought of as a dreamer," he said.

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