Says Commercial Traffic Has Dipped, Private Aircraft Taking Over

The Palm Beach International Airport in Florida has had to fight for its existence as a civilian airport more than once. After opening in 1936 as a single runway with only a small administration building, the airport was twice made a military base, during World War II and the Korean conflict. Finally, in 1960, the 2000-acre site was officially taken over by Palm Beach County.

Perhaps this history of feistiness is part of the reason for the airport's success in expansion battles with NIMBYs over the past 20 years. In an editorial, The Palm Beach Post observes that the airport has never lost one of these battles -- gaining a new terminal, a runway extension and its own interchange along I-95.

The paper says the expansion has brought the buyout and elimination of a small town, two neighborhoods and a private school, and suggests the airport's next battle is one it should lose.
 
At issue is a plan to extend the airport's smallest runway, 9R/27L, from 3,000 feet to at least 8,000 feet long, adding capacity for airlines currently limited to the 10,000-foot 9L/27R. The Post says that will require sacrificing hundreds of homes, and criticizes the airport for using unrealistic growth projections to justify the project.

"Despite 20 years of ambitious forecasts, the airport is not growing," the Post asserts in its editorial. "Overall traffic is down 20 percent since 1990. And unlike most larger airports, most of the traffic at PBIA -- a whopping 64 percent -- is not commercial flights but smaller, private general aviation planes."

One of the NIMBYs in this case is a big one -- Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago, which lies under the flight path for the parallel runways. Trump attorney Neal McAliley has lobbied the FAA to consider peak-hour pricing to reduce congestion. The Post says the FAA has dismissed the idea because PBIA doesn't meet the criteria to be considered congested, while in the same report suggesting that the runway is viable because the airport is congested.

Like many similar battles elsewhere, it's hard to know whose numbers to believe. The Post's editorial says traffic at the airport peaked in 1990 and has been declining, but doesn't elaborate. The airport's numbers show passenger emplanements and deplanements dipping through the mid-1990s, then rising to 6.9 million in 2007, up almost 22 percent from 1990 levels.
 
As the FAA's two-year review process continues, the NIMBYs are digging in. Trump's lawyers are still on the case. West Palm Beach's Vedado neighborhood is under the flight path, and is applying for status as a national historic district, which would bog down the environmental impact evaluation process. The editorial board of the Palm Beach Post predicts recent airline capacity shrinkage will be long-term, and promotes an image of business jets and other GA aircraft which use the airport as toys of the rich.

Time will tell whether organized, well-funded NIMBYs with a sympathetic local newspaper can prevail against an airport which has a winning track record against the Pentagon.

FMI: www.pbia.org