Two Experts Differ on Lindbergh Field Incentives

The two experts who spoke to the Airport Authority yesterday agree San Diego can keep Lindbergh Field from exceeding its capacity by adjusting the prices aircraft pay to land.

Where Richard Carson and Seth Young disagree, however, is whether that's the right way to handle the projected increase in demand that has the agency looking from Miramar to Imperial County for a place to handle air travelers and cargo in the year 2030.

Nor do they agree on who would lose if the region tried to solve its problems by staying put at Lindbergh.

Dueling charts, graphs and equations made for an unusual morning at the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, whose board requested the point/counterpoint as word of Carson's work began circulating among onlookers in the site-selection project.

Carson, chairman of the economics department at UC San Diego, argued that Lindbergh can accommodate the predicted increase in demand for passenger air travel with incentives for airlines to gradually phase in larger jet aircraft.

"If you can succeed at that," Carson said, "you can make Lindbergh work."

Young, an aviation consultant and professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., said Carson's approach is an invitation to a stagnant economy.

A limit to growth in air travel, Young said, means a limit to economic growth.

Additionally, he said Carson's approach would threaten airlines' ability to deploy small, regional jets to new nonstop markets, losing an untapped potential for growth in aviation activity.

"If we provide increased capacity, the demand is there," Young said.

Carson advocated a strategy that he compared to the express lanes on Interstate 15, which provide access to solo commuters for a toll that rises and falls with the amount of traffic in the lanes.

"Congestion pricing" would make it more expensive for airlines to land and depart Lindbergh during high-demand times of day. Landing fees currently are based on weight, which encourages the use of smaller aircraft. Carson said raising prices or auctioning off the slots would force airlines to use bigger aircraft, reducing the cost per passenger.

By "bigger," Carson said, airlines need only move toward the 120- to 150-passenger 737 jets used by Southwest Airlines, Lindbergh's single biggest operator, instead of the regional jets that seat 100 or fewer.

The pricing strategy might hurt marginal aviation business, Carson conceded, but ticket-price increases would be small to moderate. There would be virtually no loss in cargo, he said.

Carson said it would be preposterous to pick the Yuha Desert site in Imperial County, one of two civilian sites under review. The 100-mile distance and cost of such a facility, he argued, would kill demand through ticket-price increases just as effectively as the steps he advocates for Lindbergh.

However, Young said the high-frequency and low-fare nonstop service prized by air travelers today is best served by the turboprops and 90-seat regional jets that Carson suggested should be priced out of the market.

Young wasn't the only one with a skeptical response.

A push to bigger planes, board member William D. Lynch said, is a risky long-term strategy if airlines or passengers resist the ensuing changes in costs and scheduling.

"We spend a lot of time and energy trying to get more than one person in a car," Lynch said. "We can't seem to get it done."

Board member Paul Nieto said the strategy seems to put San Diego in a vacuum.

"The airlines would seem to make sure that they could employ these larger aircraft in all the different locations they fly to from here," Nieto said.

Coming up next in the site-selection process:

* Today: U.S. Rep. John L. Mica, R-Fla., leads a "Congressional Aviation Roundtable" at the San Diego Convention Center. Aviation, business and military representatives will exchange views on regional air capacity constraints and the site-selection project in San Diego.

* Friday: The San Diego Association of Governments board will receive a report on the feasibility of a maglev (magnetic levitation) train line to Imperial County.

* Monday: The Airport Authority's planning committee will get new information on the proposed military sites and the operational capacity of Lindbergh Field.

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