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LA/Ontario International Airport billboards questioned [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Calif.]
[October 12, 2014]

LA/Ontario International Airport billboards questioned [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Calif.]


(Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 12--ONTARIO -- A billboard marketing blitz will take off on Monday promoting flights out of LA/Ontario International Airport.

But it's a long time coming for backers of local control of the airport, who for years have argued that Los Angeles World Airports -- the agency that runs ONT -- has not lived up to its promise of spreading air traffic -- and marketing -- throughout the region's air hubs.



And documents cited recently by attorneys representing Ontario detail several instances in which Los Angeles World Airports appeared to direct key personnel to focus marketing efforts on Los Angeles International Airport rather than ONT, which is struggling to gain more travelers.

Ontario officials are focusing on those efforts in their legal battle with LAWA to wrest control of the airport.


LAWA has often scoffed at the notion, yet Ontario's lawyers point to court documents that show an April remark by Steve Martin, LAWA's chief operating officer, in which he referred publicly to the agency's attention to ONT as a "storied tale of charity toward the Inland Empire." For those arguing for local control, it is a storied tale of greed from Los Angeles.

At least that's the case Ontario has been making about the marketing situation at LA/Ontario International Airport for the past six years.

Court documents shed light LAWA had a contractual obligation, a 2006 settlement agreement with neighboring cities, to spread air traffic throughout the region, including to ONT, attorneys said.

"We have been able to show that there is a calculated conspiracy to drive business out of Ontario," said Ontario Councilman Alan Wapner.

They once again point to the court documents, where it appears that LAWA officials agreed to launch a billboard marketing campaign earlier this year only to show the agency was making some effort to draw attention to the underutilized facility.

Based on an email exchange quoted in court documents, Martin told ONT general manager Jess Romo the billboard campaign was needed so that it would "look like we are doing something to ward off bullets from the City of Ontario." Martin wrote: "We will get no more credit for $500K of billboards as $150K, and we will get just as much positive coverage for five high-profile billboards as 25 [billboards]...that never get media noticed." With the exception of advertisements in local publications, Ontario officials say they have yet to see any billboards erected.

"It was a sham; it was a facade," Wapner said about efforts to market air service to ONT. "It was them trying to show what the mayor asked them to do. They would publicly say 'this is what we're doing,' and then get behind closed doors and say, 'we're not going to do that.' " Despite the upcoming ads, court documents show there was a shift in policy regarding ONT marketing at least four years ago. Michael Collins, adviser to LAWA's executive director Gina Marie Lindsey, emailed Lindsey and Michael Molina, senior director of external affairs, on Jan. 23, 2010, and told them that "if (regionalization) keeps on 'happening' the City [Los Angeles] is in deep trouble." Collins later advised Lindsey that regionalization, which "once meant the goal of shifting air traffic away from the City of Los Angeles ... has to be seen as a form of economic and employment suicide." Alan Rothenberg, LAWA board of airport commissioner at the time, testified about the direction the agency was going in 2010 and on comments Lindsey said during a meeting.

"It's perfectly clear what she was saying that it's -- when she talks about pushing it to other jurisdictions, she's talking about San Diego, Burbank, Orange County. It's not saying that it's self-destructive to her to push it to Ontario. For these purposes, Ontario is our jurisdiction," he said.

However, in a January 2010 email to Collins, Lindsey shared notes for an upcoming meeting in which she writes that efforts to redistribute air traffic was a "politically driven mantra to appease LAX neighbors." The legal dispute For years, Ontario attempted to negotiate a transfer of the airport to a local authority. But after meetings with staff from then Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- and a report which set a sale price of $474 million for ONT, nearly double the $250 million Ontario offered -- it had become clear both sides were far apart.

In June 2013, Ontario filed a lawsuit aiming to rescind or reform the terms of the 1967 agreement that gave control of the airport to L.A.

"It is important to note the City of Ontario elected to follow a litigious path regarding the ownership and management of LA/Ontario International Airport. That path requires adjudication of the issues by a judicial system. We should rely on that system -- to consider all facts and evidence and to review them in totality," said Nancy Castles, spokeswoman for LAWA.

But the lawsuit by Ontario was preceded by one filed by the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion in March 2013 for notice of default on the 2006 settlement agreement.

Denny Schneider, president of ARSAC, said the group and residents of neighboring cities are not in it for the money, they want to make sure a regional network of airports is established.

"It's time for the public to realize that LAWA does not have everyone's best interest at heart and in the end, it's the public that loses," he said.

Schneider said as part of the settlement agreement, LAWA agreed to establish a working group to discuss redistribution efforts. Several years ago, LAWA met with members of ARSAC but only after it made a presentation to the Board of Airport Commissioners first, he said.

"They basically told us, 'trust us, we're doing a good job.' The numbers of passengers at Ontario disputes that highly," Schneider said.

LAWA has held meetings to market Ontario but whenever Schneider said he tried to get details, they weren't made available to him.

"Just because they held lots of meetings doesn't mean they did anything and that's what we've been saying all along," he said.

For Schneider, the recent filings reaffirm what he's been saying about LAWA.

"They tell us one thing and do something else behind closed doors," he said. "They just got caught." Attorneys for L.A. and Ontario will be back in court on Oct. 31 for a hearing on a motion filed by LAWA to have the case thrown out of court.

"It is disappointing the plaintiffs will take selective, and what they believe are the most incendiary, comments to include in a court filing and to present them in a way that supports their position," Castles said in a statement. "Comments of Los Angeles World Airports senior executives were taken completely out of context, and were not within the totality of the entire case. Without the context and the totality of the case being heard, the comments are being misunderstood." Due to pending litigation, LAWA has no further comments, Castles said.

Even as the entities are set to meet in court, Ontario continues to meet with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti who has stated he is still interested in negotiating a transfer for a fair price.

Spending less on Ontario airport Ontario claims LAWA abandoned efforts to spread air traffic, ignoring ONT in an effort to protect LAX.

Court documents show the airport agency was spending between $2 million and $3 million on marketing ONT in 2007, and then the following four years those expenses were slashed to just $140,000 annually.

But sole attention to LAX wasn't always the case. Mark Thorpe, LAWA's former director of Air Service, testified that when he was brought in, "growing air service at ONT was a long-standing institutional objective of LAWA." Sometime in 2008 -- at the start of the economic downturn -- Lindsey directed him to shift his focus to LAX, Thorpe testified.

Thorpe said he was told he needed to focus on LAX because the airport was in the process of rebuilding an international terminal.

"I still had a lot of meetings with Ontario and still tried to recruit new airlines service, but without, you know, the advertising and marketing and with the airlines leaving the market, I was -- you were -- you were in sort of the beginning of a vicious cycle there," Thorpe said in his deposition.

In his testimony, Martin was asked about an email in which he told staff to not set up meetings if there is nothing to sell.

"... If your air service development people had nothing new or positive or different to convey to airline representatives in order to try and sell them on ONT air service, then why have a meeting?" Martin said.

Other efforts by LAWA included a 2009 move to hire consultant Peggy Ducey to address the drastic downturn at ONT.

That was the year LAWA announced that the agency was hoping Disneyland would be the magic ticket for declining passengers at ONT. It was Ducey who spearheaded a campaign for the agency to make ONT the airport of choice for Disneyland visitors.

Ducey was let go by the agency before the ONT-Disneyland marketing strategy could move into the planning phase.

"They never had any intent on marketing the airport," Wapner said. "They come up with all these silly ideas, like asking airlines to pick up the maintenance costs.

In 2012, LAWA brought in an airline expert who suggested the agency rebrand ONT as a high-end facility, but the plan was met with criticism from the airport commissioners.

"Then there was the airport-to-Disney push that stopped in its tracks. Any time we started moving in a direction that might lead to some success at the airport they squashed it immediately and then they blame it on our economy." Ontario has long argued that LAWA has done little to help restore the 40 percent loss in passenger traffic the airport experienced starting in 2007 when 7.2 million passengers flew in and out of the medium hub facility.

Recession blamed The airline industry was hit by the recession and high oil prices, forcing some carriers to concentrate operations at airports like LAX.

But LAWA officials contend that it cannot tell airlines where to fly, and the shift in operations was due to the economic conditions in the industry.

"That's just their self-serving prophecy. The only negative part of our economy is the airport, everything else has rebounded," Wapner said. "They have not shown any effort and now what we have shown is there was a conspiracy, an effort to not do anything so Ontario can survive." ___ (c)2014 the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.) Visit the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.) at www.dailybulletin.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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