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AVIATION/AEROSPACE INDUSTRY FOCUS March 4-17, 2014
Long Beach Business Journal 13
U.S. Customs May Be In Long Beach Airport’s Future ■ By SAMANTHA MEHLINGER Staff Writer After the possibility of adding U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the Long Beach Airport was shelved a few years ago, the subject may be revived after JetBlue recently expressed interest in footing some of the costs, according to Roland Scott, chair of the Long Beach Airport Advisory Commission. JetBlue General Manager Thomas Berg told the Business Journal in January that the company was interested in investing in U.S. Customs at the airport, although at this time he said he could not provide more information. Bringing U.S. Customs services to the Long Beach Airport was last looked at about three or four years ago, when the airport approached the Department of Homeland Security to discuss the cost of adding agents to the facility, Scott said. “The cost was prohibitive,” he said of why the concept was dropped. The idea at the time was to have U.S. Customs agents working at the airport on an on-call basis, perhaps borrowed as needed from the Port of Long Beach. “We had looked at it. I contacted somebody at customs and they were less than enthusiastic about sharing some of the port customs people to be on call,” Scott recalled. Now, the idea is to have agents
at the airport on a permanent basis, he said. A couple of months ago, JetBlue contacted airport administration about the possibility of footing part of the bill for adding customs services to the airport, and the administration in turn discussed it with the advisory commission, Scott explained. “JetBlue has demonstrated some interest in flying out of Long Beach to Mexico,” he said. “I think they said if they are awarded so many flights they would be willing to pay for the majority of it.” But, he stressed, “This is all very preliminary. Nothing has been decided yet.” JetBlue currently offers international flights to Cancun, Mexico, out of Florida, as well as destinations in the Caribbean, Central America and Northern South America. Many questions remain about adding customs to the airport, including whether or not JetBlue would foot the whole bill, and if not, who would pay for the remainder. After all, “You don’t want to dump it on the taxpayer,” Scott pointed out. Another question is whether or not a facility would have to be built for customs services or whether they would be integrated with existing facilities. “One of the questions is, where are you going to put it and where is the square footage available?” Scott said. “Obviously the best idea is to have it right there in the terminal so you could have people disembark an airplane, walk straight into cus-
toms and right out to the baggage claim,” he explained. An alternative would be building a remote facility separate from the concourse, but that would necessitate busing people from international flights to that building, which is less than ideal, Scott noted. Adding customs and international flights would benefit the airport, its tenants and the city, Scott said. “It would be tremendous because it would allow Long Beach to be an international destination,” he said. General aviation pilots would be able to fly to nearby locations where they may have summer homes, he pointed out, while fixed-base operators with international ties would not have to fly their executives through other regional airports, thereby saving them money. The city could benefit from increased revenues and travellers, he mused. “This is a nice convention city, so it would benefit the hotel and convention business. Who knows, you might have an international conference here,” he added. Another benefit would be increasing the airport’s attractiveness to other airlines. If JetBlue, which holds the majority of the airport’s flight slots, decided to merge with another airline and cease operations at Long Beach Airport, having customs could help attract other airlines, Scott said. “So if all your eggs are in one (Please Continue To Page 14)