Set ONTario Free

Currently Ontario International Airport (ONT) is operated by the City of Los Angeles' Department of Airports (also known as Los Angeles World Airports, LAWA). ONT is located 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles in San Bernardino County.

The airport traces its origin to 1923, making it one of the oldest in the nation and the state. In 1959 commercial air service became vastly more popular. In that time, LAX remained the principal airport serving Southern California. There were often times when LAX was shrouded in fog, which required flights to divert to ONT.

In 1967 a contract was signed between the City of Los Angeles and the City of Ontario for the Joint Exercise of Powers in Relation to Ontario International Airport (JPA). Both parties felt that considerable benefit would result to ONT and LAX, to the two cities and to the users of air transportation into and out of Southern California. From the signing of the JPA in 1967 until deregulation of the airline industry in 1978, the two airports were treated the same by the Civil Aeronautics Board for the purposes of airline route authorities and the setting of airfares. Air service began to take off and by 1971 the airport was serving more than one million passengers a year.

Airline rates and charges at ONT were extremely low through the 1990s. This was typical of secondary airports in the United States. As planning for new ONT facilities turned to how to pay for them. The airlines and LAWA agreed to a plan using Passenger Facility Charges that would help keep operating costs as low as possible after the new facilities opened. Federal legislation created the ability for airports to charge a passenger Facility Charge to be collected by the airlines in the ticketing process with funds held in trust by the airport sponsor for approved capital projects.

While debt service costs were kept low, LAWA made a number of decisions that dramatically increased costs, including staffing the new facilities with City of Los Angeles employees, bringing in-house functions, and imposing a burdensome administrative charge. These decisions would rapidly lead to high personnel costs that would make it much more expensive for airlines to serve ONT.

Currently domestic departures are down 56% and destinations offered are down from 32 to 14. In 2011, two million passengers bypassed ONT. This led to approximately 1.3 billion car trips into LAX. This also led to over nine thousand job loses and a downfall in the Inland Empire economy.

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