A decade after Los Angeles agreed to return ownership of Ontario International Airport to the City of Ontario, an obscure debate is ongoing in the back halls of power throughout the county as to whether the change benefited or damaged the community.
While the ownership and management transition undeniably restored local control over what is arguably one of, if not the most valuable of San Bernardino County’s man-made assets, there is a case to be made that its placement into the hands of a consortium of provincial, less sophisticated, inexperienced and self-focused civic leaders has curtailed the facility’s growth potential over the next several foreseeable generations and obliterated the possibility of effectuating a rational approach to regional transportation [asset] operations and function.
Featured in that debate is the relative truth or falsity of the self-serving assertions of those who now hold sway over the airport that they are to be credited with having restored passenger levels at the medium hub facility to what they were 18 years ago, when, under the guidance of the political and administrative megalopolis to the west, the now 102-year-old aerodrome achieved its record ridership level.
Questions persist as to whether the reestablishment of local control over the airport has been and is a benefit to the city, its residents, the region, the airport itself or the flying public, as the change of title has resulted in expenses that have made it into one of the world’s most costly airfields to fly out of on the West Coast, the country and, on a comparative basis, the world.
Among those close to the current situation and those who were once intimately involved in the airport’s operations when it was under the management of Los Angeles World Airports, the corporate arm of the City of Los Angeles which operated Los Angeles International Airport, Ontario International Airport and Van Nuys Airport, there are accounts of how the politicians who have been entrusted with overseeing the airport and the quasi-governmental, quasi-corporate entity which operates it have used their authority to “shake down” companies or entities with service franchises or vending, service provision or consulting contracts at the aerodrome for what are, in essence, kickbacks, which has resulted in no-bid or skewered-bidding contracting processes by which work is performed at an increased cost.
During its first forty-plus years of existence, from its outset as the private Latimer Field in 1923 and its conversion to a public facility and name changeover to Ontario Airport in 1929, the ensuing Great Depression, World War II, its rebranding as Ontario International Airport in 1946 due to the trans-Pacific cargo flights originating there and the postwar prosperity that saw the largely agricultural Inland Empire, including the roughly 10,000 acres of vineyards that surrounded the airport gradually converted to industrial, commercial and residential use, the airport existed as a small regional airstrip. In 1967, at which point Ontario Airport had fewer than 200,000 passengers passing through its gates per year, the Ontario City Council entered into a joint powers agreement with the City of Los Angeles in which the larger city’s Department of Airports was to take over aviation operations in Ontario. Los Angeles officials, with their control over gate positions at Los Angeles International Airport, was able to induce a multitude of airlines to fly into and out of the smaller facility. Los Angeles, through its Department of Airports and airport-operating corporate division, Los Angeles World Airports, also known by its acronym LAWA, made investments in the facility, paving its sand flea-infested gravel parking lot and modernizing, restructuring and gentrifying its basic facilities such as its terminal, passenger walkway, tower and walkway.
By 1969, flights out of Ontario had dramatically increased and would continue to do so as, Los Angeles World Airports and Los Angeles city officials used their influence with various airlines. Continental Airlines, PSA, United, American Airlines, Hughes Air West, and Delta established routes to and from Ontario. Though a benchmark of 10 million passengers at the airport by 1975 was not achieved, Los Angeles World Airports still assiduously promoted Ontario International. Under the management and care of Los Angeles officials, in 1981, a modern, second east-to-west runway at Ontario International was built, necessitating the removal of the old northeast-to-southwest runway.
By the early 1980s Los Angeles had met all the performance criteria laid out in the 1967 joint powers agreement. The City of Ontario was at that time led by Mayor Robert Ellingwood, who was resistant to the concept of Ontario complying with the terms of the 1967 pact and turning ownership of the airport over to Los Angeles. In 1985, during Ellingwood’s brief absence from the city, four members of the Ontario City Council as it was then composed voted to deed Ontario Airport to the City of Los Angeles for no consideration, pursuant to what was considered a public benefit transfer that most local officials, with a few notable exceptions such as Ellingwood, believed would improve the airport.
Indeed, over the four decades from 1967 until 2007, the relationship between Ontario and Los Angeles vis-à-vis the airport proved highly advantageous. All told, Los Angeles instituted some $550 million worth of improvements to the airport, including quadrupling its parking capacity, modernizing its runways, including the widening of taxiways and the addition of storm drains. Ontario Airport’s landing and take-off paths were converted into the longest such civilian facilities in Southern California, and Los Angeles erected a state-of-the-art control tower, and constructed two ultra-modern terminals at a cost of $270 million, augmented with a world class concourse. The number of airlines using the airport had grown to 14.
Throughout the massive financial lull of the Great Recession, however, air travel dropped off significantly and airlines, in an effort to shield themselves from the continuing economic decline, began cutting back on flights, particularly to locations outside the most heavily concentrated population centers. Beginning in late 2007 and until early 2014, passenger traffic at Ontario International declined steadily. The number of passengers at Ontario International retreated from a record 7,207,150 in 2007 to 6,232,975 in 2008 to 4,861,110 in 2009 to 4,812,578 in 2010.
In 2010, Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner initiated a campaign aimed at prying control and ownership of Ontario International Airport away from Los Angeles. Wapner approached this task by initiating a series of personal and vindictive attacks on Los Angeles officials, most prominently Los Angeles World Airports Executive Director Gina Marie Lindsey, claiming, spuriously, that they were responsible for the decline in ridership at Ontario Airport. LAWA and Lindsey were deliberately manipulating the situation to raise costs at Ontario International and thereby minimize both ridership and revenues there as part of a plot to increase revenue and gate numbers at Los Angeles International Airport, Wapner alleged. His city council colleagues echoed these accusations.
Even as Wapner was pursuing this strategy, passenger numbers at Ontario continued to fall, to 4,540,694 in 2011. Los Angeles World Airports executives sought to redress the situation, but were hamstrung by the consideration that the key to increasing ridership at Ontario International was keeping the airlines flying into and out of it in place and adding more. With the contraction of the airline industry generally in the face of the economic downturn, a number of airlines had already pulled up stakes and left Ontario and more were contemplating doing so. It took the best efforts of Los Angeles World Airports airline relations staff to convince two of the seven airlines that remained at Ontario, which were on the verge of leaving themselves, to stay in place.
LAWA managers asserted that the airline executives’ decisions relating to where flights needed to be directed to maintain their corporations’ profitability were the driving factor in the dwindling passenger levels at Ontario International. This softened no soap with Wapner, who along with other Ontario officials rejected such explanations as implausible excuses meant to mask the Los Angeles World Airports’ ill intent to promote Los Angeles International Airport at the expense of Ontario. Ridership at Ontario International continued to decline in the face of the growing contretemps between Ontario and Los Angeles, falling to 4,296,459 in 2012 and hitting rock bottom at 3,971,136 in 2013. Amidst this, the City of Ontario joined with San Bernardino County in forming the Ontario International Airport Authority in 2012, designating Wapner as the president/chairman of the authority’s board of directors. What Ontario officials clearly had in mind was that the authority would oversee the airport when Los Angeles was out of the picture.
In 2013, Ontario, represented by the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, sued Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, claiming neglect and negligence, breach of contract and misfeasance in the operation and management of Ontario International Airport, along with damages.
In 2014, however, as the economy began to rebound and air travel in general started to pick up around the country, ridership at Ontario International Airport zoomed to 4,127,280. That did not result in Ontario officials rethinking the wisdom of litigating against the megalopolis that had assisted it in building Ontario Airport into what was certainly one of the leading hubs in the country and arguably the nation’s most noteworthy subregional airport. Nor did they desist in the vitriolic attacks on Los Angeles and its officials.
Of note was that despite suing Los Angeles over the airport, Ontario remained entirely dependent on Los Angeles for the facility’s management and operation. The smaller city had nothing in the way of personnel or operational expertise to keep the extremely sophisticated and complex systems, departments, equipment and facilities an airport entails functional or safe.
In 2015 Ontario Airport continued on the road to recovery, with the number of passengers reaching 4,209,311. That August, Los Angeles moved to settle the lawsuit Ontario had brought against it, agreeing to return the airport, lock, stock and barrel to the smaller municipality to its east, conditional upon Ontario covering operational, improvement and financing costs that the taxpayers in Los Angeles had been absorbing for decades.
In December 2015, Los Angeles and Ontario signed an agreement finalizing the transfer as of November 1, 2016, with Ontario paying Los Angeles $60 million out of its various operating funds and another $30 million taken out of its reserves, and committing to make payments of $50 million over five years and $70 million in the final five years of the ten-year ownership transition. In addition, Ontario absorbed $60 million of the airport’s bond debt.
As part of the settlement worked out between Los Angeles and Ontario, Los Angeles graciously agreed to continue its management/operational oversight of the airport until noon November 1, 2016.
In 2016, ridership at Ontario Airport continued to go up, to 4,251,903.
Of note, when Ontario brought in its own management team for the post-November 1, 2016 era of Ontario International Airport’s existence, it in large measure cannibalized management and operational personnel from Los Angeles World Airports.
In the interregnum between the settlement of the lawsuit in August of 2015 and Ontario’s full reassumption of ownership of the airport in November 2016, the Ontario International Airport Authority in January 2016 exercised its nescient power as the overseer of the airport to bring in Kelly Fredericks, the president and CEO of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation and the manager of T.F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island to serve as Ontario International Airport’s executive manager. Fredericks was to acclimate himself to Ontario during the final nine months of Los Angeles World Airport’s operation of Ontario International Airport and take over upon Ontario’s assumption of the facility once more.
The department heads and submanagers at the airport under Fredericks both pre-November 2016 and post-November 2016 were Los Angeles World Airports veterans. As things developed, Fredericks and his political masters on the Ontario City Council and the Ontario International Airport Authority did not see eye-to-eye and he departed from his post at the airport in July 2017.
The airport authority turned to another former executive with Los Angeles World Airports, Mark Thorpe, to replace Fredericks.
When push came to shove and Ontario’s political leadership needed the necessary talent to keep planes taking off and landing at Ontario International Airport, they turned to the very people they had claimed were running the airport into the ground.
Under the combined guidance of Fredericks and Thorpe, ridership at Ontario International Airport increased in 2017 to 4,552,225. With Thorpe as the titular leader of the airport, Ontario saw the number of passengers continue to increase, hitting 5,115,894 in 2018 and 5,583,732 in 2019.
Though Wapner, some of his council colleagues and those in their orbit sought to credit the jump in ridership at the airport to Ontario reasserting itself and seizing the aerodrome from Los Angeles, the reality was that the recovering economy had boosted air flight across the board. Indeed, a comparison to Los Angeles International Airport’s passenger numbers at the same time demonstrates that the Southern California region was a popular departure and destination venue, and that Los Angeles officials did a better job of capitalizing on that opportunity than did their counterparts in Ontario.
In 2015, the number of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport was 51.56 million. In 2016, the number of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport was 54.2 million. In 2017, the number of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport was 58.07 million. In 2018, the number of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport was 87,533,177. In 2019, the number of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport was 88,068,013.
In 2020, Wapner and the rest of the Ontario City Council and the Ontario International Airport Authority were given a stern lesson in economic reality and the way in which causation and factors that account for that reality can be willingly misinterpreted to be wielded against reality’s bystanders. That year, the coronavirus/COVID pandemic resulted in a reduction of air travel even greater than what occurred during the Great Recession. At that point, however, Wapner and his city council colleagues were in complete charge and control over the airport, and could not blame the drop in total ridership at Ontario International Airport to 2,538,482, a decline of 54.54 percent over the previous year, on the City of Los Angeles.
By 2022, lockdowns and quarantines had been discontinued. In the years since, the economy has pretty much restored itself.
Nevertheless, Ontario Airport officials do not have any leverage they can utilize to convince carriers to fly into or out of Ontario International. The growth that has taken place at Ontario International Airport since Ontario took possession of it, while not insignificant, is a fraction of the rate of growth that occurred historically when Los Angeles ran it. Eleven airlines at present have established gates at Ontario International, three fewer than was the case in 2007. Still, the airport is host to 20 airlines that make either regular or semi-regular flights into Ontario, those being Aeromexico; Air Canada; Air France; British Airways, Alaska Airlines and its affiliate Alaska Sky West; American Airlines and its affiliate American Eagle; China Airlines; Delta Airlines and its affiliate Delta Connection; Frontier Airlines; Hawaiian Airlines; Iberia; KLM; Korean Air; LATAM; Qatar; Southwest Airlines; United and its regional network affiliate United Express; Virgin Atlantic; Volaris; and West Air. In addition, another 19 airlines – Alaska Horizon, Alaska Sky West, Avianca, Avianca El Salvador, Copa Airlines, Dreamline Aviation, Emirates, Flexjet, Jet Linx Aviation, Jet Out, Jet Blue, Lufthansa, Netjets, Porter Airlines, Silver Air, Solairus Aviation, Starlux, Vista America and WestJet – fly into and out of Ontario on an irregular, infrequent, pass-through, special or promotional basis.
With the anomaly of the pandemic and its 18-to-20-month paralysis from the imposed societal shutdown aside, Ontario’s ownership and management of Ontario International Airport has corresponded with an expansion of the local, state and national economy. That economic advancement was reflected in the 6,430,033 passengers the airport serviced in 2023 and the jump to 7,084,864 passengers there from January 1, 2024 until December 31, 2024.
Ontario International’s 2024 numbers are a 10.2 percent improvement over 2023 and 27 percent more than pre-pandemic 2019. Citing those statistics, airport officials on January 23 put out a statement that Ontario International is “the fastest growing among medium- and large-size airports in California. The 2024 count also represents a 67 percent increase since 2016, when Ontario International Airport was transferred to local control from the City of Los Angeles.”
In addition, for 2024 at Ontario, the number of domestic travelers totaled 6,645,968, an increase of 10.5 percent year-over-year, while the number of international fliers grew by 5.1 percent to 438,896, the highest in the airport’s history.
Passenger traffic in 2025 is on a trajectory to reach a number just slightly below that achieved at the airport in 2007.
Ontario officials have hailed this as a milestone, one that will match the airport’s passenger achievement in 2024.
Still, there is a very real sense among those with more than a passing acquaintance with the facts of the matter that had Ontario officials stayed the course by maintaining the ownership/management arrangement for the airport with the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, the 7.2 million passenger mark at Ontario International would have been eclipsed two years ago and ridership in 2025 would have neared or surpassed 8 million.
Los Angeles International Airport is host to 93 different airlines and accommodates 76 of those on a daily basis. Los Angeles International Airport, which averages 1,578 take-offs and landings daily compared to Ontario International’s 146 take-offs and landings, on average, daily. Had Ontario International Airport maintained its affiliation with Los Angeles International Airport, LAWA would have remained inclined to use its leverage with air carriers, trading [preferable] gate positions at Los Angeles International and other advantages, to induce airlines to schedule flights to the inland airfield.
The inability of the City of Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority to offer airlines the same corporate perquisites and operational edge at Los Angeles International Airport that LAWA could is only part of the reason why airlines are reluctant to fly into and out of Ontario International. That part of the story goes deep into the culture of Ontario politics over the last three decades and the rampant corruption that has infested city government there. The impact of this corruption manifests in more than one way, two of which have been made increasingly apparent to ever more airlines’ corporate officers.
One of the disincentives influencing the decision of airline executives to forego having their companies fly into and out of Ontario International is cost – consisting of an added financial burden on the air carriers and higher ticket prices for passengers. For some 8 million residents of Southern California – those living in the inland areas of Orange and Los Angeles counties and all of those living in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties – Ontario Airport represents a far more convenient flying option than Los Angeles International Airport, given its easier and swifter accessibility because of the gridlock on Los Angeles’s streets and freeways.
For Angelenos who live as few as ten to fifteen files east of Los Angeles International Airport, depending on the time of day and freeway conditions, they can drive to Ontario International Airport, which is some 40 miles distant, in less time and undergo far less hassle, difficulty and general inconvenience than what they need to endure to get to the larger airport. Despite that, the vast majority elect to fly out of Los Angeles because of the prohibitive expense of airline tickets in Ontario.
According to air traveler guides, flights out of Ontario International cost roughly $90 more on average than those out of Los Angeles International. In some cases, the cost differential on flights to the same destination on the same airline run to as much as $219 more.
That price differential is a function of the costs borne by the airlines for the services provided to them by airports, which include charges for the use of the runway and landing facilities, the tower, the terminal, refueling, routine external and internal plane inspection, ground handling, baggage and cargo management, aircraft marshalling, cabin cleaning, passenger service, baggage tracking, baggage handling, immigration and customs clearance, passenger information, air cargo handling, passenger amenities and coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration. Those costs are passed along to the flying customers.
The inflated ticket prices this year alone resulted in thousands, indeed tens of thousands, of travelers who otherwise would have flown from Ontario to elect to fly instead out of Los Angeles. That reduction in customers has served as a factor in the decisions of airlines already functioning out of Ontario to refrain from increasing the number of routes or flights departing from Ontario. The steeper operating charges at Ontario International has, at least with a handful of airlines, impacted on their decision to not offer customers flights out of Ontario.
The reason behind those higher charges to airlines at Ontario is a mystery to some of those aware of it, been speculated at by others contemplating it and is known by more than a handful of city and airport insiders and close observers.
Even before Ontario reassumed ownership and operation of the airport in November 2016, the city had sway over many services and franchises that pertain to the airport itself or the airport’s surroundings, such as taxi service, towing, car rentals and the like. With the ownership and management transfer, city officials and/or the Ontario International Airport Authority inherited authority over even more critical elements of an aviation facility’s operation and the provision of services and functions. Included in this melange are the constant supply of aviation fuel, its storage and the equipment and machinery to dispense it; runway/tarmac maintenance; concourse upkeep; terminal operation and maintenance, which in the case of Ontario International pertains to three separate terminals and includes physical repair, janitorial services, baggage conveyors, maintenance of extensive ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems; grounds and landscape maintenance; advertising venues such as signs and electronic billboards in and outside the terminal; the concessions inside the terminal including those for food and merchandise. In addition, the City of Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority took over the administrative, corporate and management functions that had previously been the province of the Los Angeles Department of Airports and Los Angeles World Airports. This entailed a host of functions and services and the employment of staff and contracts with vendors and service providers and consultants.
Ontario politics had already been fraught with political patronage, whereby donors to the city’s politicians’ electioneering accounts – primarily the mayor and city council – were rewarded with lucrative city contracts that went to them or their companies. There were rampant rumors and even some tangible indications that those receiving favorable treatment by the city or blessed with franchises approved by the mayor and city council had been providing those politicians with money or inducements other than funding for political campaigns.
With Ontario’s assumption of the airport’s ownership, a remarkable number of the mayor’s and certain city council members’ political backers found themselves employed at the airport or with the Ontario International Airport Authority, hired as consultants by the airport authority or had a stake in or outright owned companies given contracts or franchises relating to the airport. In more than one case, the bidding process for those contracts had been dispensed with and no effort was made to determine if the same service could be provided at a lesser cost. In some cases, it was not clear what service or advice was being provided and what value to the airport, the airport authority, the City of Ontario or the Ontario community the service rendered or advice actually was.
Those contract or consulting services do, however, represent added costs to the airport and the airport authority, ones which are ultimately defrayed or recouped through higher airport service charges to the airlines, which in turn are reflected in higher ticket prices for air passengers flying out of Ontario International Airport.
Buried within this avalanche of untoward implication is what is said to be the refusal on the part of some airline executives to engage with representatives from the Ontario International Authority in a discussion relating to their airlines operating at Ontario International because of reports they have received with regard to members of the authority’s board of directors previously seeking to shake down aviation industry officials for monetary support in the form of political donations to their campaign funds.
With the creation of the Ontario International Airport Authority in August 2012, the Ontario City Council appointed Councilman Wapner and Councilman Jim Bowman to its board and shortly thereafter Wapner was selected to serve as that panel’s president. Throughout the board’s entire 13-plus year history, Wapner and Bowman have remained on the board and there has been no other board president than Wapner. In that same 13-year timeframe, Wapner has proven to be the most prolific recipient of political donations among all of San Bernardino County’s local elected officials, taking in more than $1.2 million.
After 31 years in office as a city councilman in Ontario, earlier this year he announced that next year he will run for Ontario mayor, taking on the incumbent, Paul Leon, who has been mayor since 2005 and served seven years on the city council prior to that.
In seeking the mayoralty, Wapner intends to campaign, with even greater emphasis than he utilized in his city council campaigns in 2022 and 2018, on the contention that he is the person most responsible for wresting Ontario International Airport from the clutches of Los Angeles.
Most certainly, that assertion is a true one, as it is indisputable that Wapner was the prime mover in the successful series of maneuvers to have Ontario reclaim its namesake aerodrome. Such a campaign holds promise, as to the casual observers and the uninitiated, Ontario taking control of the airport’s destiny is, at least superficially, a positive development for the Ontario community and San Bernardino County.
Nevertheless, actuality is far more complicated and convoluted than appearances. Leon, who for thirteen years has deferred to Wapner on virtually every matter, issue and item relating to the airport and has remained, if not entirely out of, at least rather removed from the informational loop regarding operations there, has his ear to the rail and is peripherally aware at this point of the highly questionable decision-making process that has been ongoing at the city’s most visible and valuable asset. He, like only a relative handful of others, recognizes that had Wapner been less vituperatively offensive in dealing with the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, Ontario might have preserved the positive relationship it had with those who had transformed Ontario Airport from the small regional airfield with fewer than 200,000 people passing through its gates in a single year to one which handled 7.2 million passengers annually. He can make a credible case that but for Wapner’s scorched earth approach, the airport and its management would yet have a cordial and mutually beneficial ties with the nation’s second busiest airport and by extension access to the top executives of the world’s 60 largest airlines, such that Ontario International Airport by the end of 2025 would have easily had upwards of 8 million passengers flying into it and out of it and approaching 9 million by the end of 2026.
Leon has access to information and the stump from which to expose that it is Wapner’s doing that the cost of airline tickets for flights out of Ontario International Airport run anywhere from ten percent to 25 percent higher than for tickets to comparable destinations when the flier travels from Los Angeles. Along the way, Leon will be able to work into that narrative that a primary factor leading to those higher ticket prices is Wapner’s willingness to accept campaign donations in exchange for lucrative positions of employment or contracts with the airport authority.
Perhaps most significantly, Leon is position to explain to Ontario’s voters that in his headlong pursuit of taking control over Ontario International Airport, Wapner interrupted what was on track to be a rational and mutually beneficial coordination of how the eight primary commercial passenger airports in the Southern California – Los Angeles International Airport, San Diego International Airport, Ontario International Airport, Palm Springs International Airport, John Wayne Airport, Long Beach Airport, and Hollywood Burbank Airport and San Bernardino International Airport – are to share passengers and airlines that eliminate unnecessary and extended travel on the freeway system.
In this way, the 2026 Ontario mayoral election has the potential of becoming a referendum on whether the Wapner-led campaign to return the airport to local control represents a boom or bust.
Wapner is ready to contest that viewpoint.
Ontario International Airport was in a downward spiral a decade ago, and local leaders took bold steps to bring it back home,” Wapner said. “Today, Ontario International Airport is thriving – a vital economic engine for the Inland Empire and a source of pride for our entire region.”