SAN BERNARDINO (April 28)—Boeing is once again pulling up its stakes at San Bernardino International Airport, where for the last eleven months it has been flight testing 747 and 787-8 aircraft.
It was announced this week that Boeing will leave San Bernardino International in favor of Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville.
The Seattle-based company, the world’s leading manufacturer of large scale passenger aircraft, last week signed a three-year $1.8 million lease at Southern California Logistics Airport, known by its acronym SCLA.
Boeing had a previous arrangement with San Bernardino International for test flights intended to shake out both  aircraft as well as the GE engines that power them, but left the facility three years ago after growing disenchanted with the way Scot Spencer, the airport’s former contract developer, was managing the facility.
In September 2011, the FBI conducted a search warrant at San Bernardino International Airport and many of Spencer’s corporate facilities and offices. In February 2012, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority – a joint powers agency combining the interests that the county of San Bernardino and the cities of Highland, Loma Linda, Colton and San Bernardino have in the airport – moved to break its contract with Spencer after a series of operational miscues at the airport, including the depletion of its aviation fuel stores to the point that planes flying out of the facility could not be refueled.
Spencer was subsequently criminally charged. In May of last year, Boeing resumed test flights out of San Bernardino.
The decision by Boeing to utilize Southern California Logistics Airport as the staging area for its systems flight testing, is a setback for San Bernardino International.
Though it has an ultra-modern concourse and terminal, which was completed at a cost of more than $136 million, San Bernardino International has virtually no commercial flight activity. There is little prospect that will change in the near future. It is in direct competition with Ontario International Airport as a hosting ground for commercial carriers and flights into and out of Ontario have diminished over the last six years as flights at Los Angeles International Airport have risen.
San Bernardino International Airport was formerly Norton Air Force Base, which was shuttered by the Department of Defense in 1994. Southern California Logistics Airport was formerly George Air Force Base, which was closed by the Department of Defense in 1992.