Dealing a setback to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan for a network of regional airports, United Airlines has decided to halt its service out of LA/Palmdale Regional Airport starting Dec. 7, city officials said Thursday.
Los Angeles World Airports General Manager Gina Marie Lindsey said United, the only major carrier at Palmdale airport, was losing "significant money" on the initiative despite receiving government subsidies.
"Everybody's disappointed that it has not turned out to be more successful, but it was certainly a valiant effort," she said.
The pullout comes 15 months after Villaraigosa and other L.A. politicians stood on the tarmac in Palmdale to welcome United, hailing it as a sign that they were making headway in redistributing the passenger load away from LAX.
Within months, however, the airline was struggling to fill its twice-daily flights to San Francisco, with 2 of 3 seats going empty. A decision last month to switch to a smaller propeller plane -- and four flights a day -- did not help, Lindsey said.
The push to add flights at Palmdale had been supported initially by a $900,000 grant from the federal government, airport officials said. The grant was not renewed this year.
"It's an unfortunate casualty of a weak economy and unsustainable high fuel prices," said the mayor's spokesman, Matt Szabo.
Szabo said the mayor "remains committed" to the regionalization of air travel in Southern California and has instructed the L.A. airports agency to reinvest money intended for Palmdale to promote services at LA/Ontario International Airport.
In his letter to the Department of Transportation seeking more grant money, Villaraigosa said LA/Palmdale was off to a "promising start" and was pivotal to the effort to create a regional airport network.
"I consider the reopening of the LA/Palmdale [airport] to commercial jet service by United Airlines on June 7, 2007, one of the top accomplishments of my administration," he wrote.
Neighborhood leaders who live near LAX -- many of whom supported Villaraigosa in the 2005 election -- have argued that air traffic should be spread more evenly throughout the region. Villaraigosa responded by moving to resurrect the Southern California Regional Airport Authority, an agency that had been dormant for years.
That group went six months without a single meeting and pulled the plug in February.
