As more people fly to Palm Springs, Thermal airport wants to grow — and draw airlines

With business booming at Palm Springs International Airport, local leaders are working to ensure the Coachella Valley can keep up with passenger numbers that are expected to continue going up, up and away over at least the next 20 years.

A planning process launched last year has largely focused on an eventual expansion of Palm Springs International as the solution, with leaders settling earlier this year on a plan that would increase the number of the gates from 18 to 32 while overhauling the terminals and adding a customs facility, expanded spaces for parking and ticketing and other features.

But the Coachella Valley’s main airport isn’t the only one with eyes on the growing demand for air travel and ambitions to capture at least some of that growth.

A little over 20 miles east of PSP sits one of the Coachella Valley’s other airports: Jacqueline Cochran Regional, which is just south and west of Coachella and Thermal respectively. (The valley is also home to the privately owned Bermuda Dunes airport).

While its lack of commercial air service means it is obscure to many in the valley, the county-owned Cochran has become prominent destination for private plane traffic. It achieves a dose of fame each spring when wealthy jetsetters — and even the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Rihanna and other big-name celebrities — land there before the Coachella festival, or attend exclusive parties in hangars on its premises during the festival.

More recently, the airport and the plentiful land that surrounds it have been receiving new attention locally. Some valley residents have said it makes more sense to bring new flights to the Thermal airport than to double down on a Palm Springs site that is now surrounded on all sides by neighborhoods whose residents who are often not fond of living under noisy flight paths.

Local leaders — including the county official who oversees Cochran airport — say there are several reasons growing the east valley airport is not a realistic substitute for expanding Palm Springs International.

Still, some county officials say they are hopeful a day will arrive when valley residents can start a vacation with a flight from Thermal. And recent efforts are bringing that vision closer to reality.

“I think it's eminently possible, and we're working on it,” Angela Jamison, the director of airports for Riverside County, said of the possibility of Cochran becoming a local player in commercial aviation. “There is plenty of room in the region for two airports, so we don't even necessarily need to compete with one another.”

Tower, airline flights planned in Thermal

Earlier this year, Riverside County issued a request for proposals seeking “a qualified and experienced operator/developer to lease, develop, establish and operate airline passenger and/or cargo services" on the airport's east side.

If a firm is found, it would lease 152 acres from the county for as much as 30 to 50 years and be principally responsible for the upgrades and approvals needed to begin airline service, although the county says it wants to help in that process.

Jamison told The Desert Sun earlier this month that the county had received one proposal that she was in the process of reviewing and was not ready to publicly comment on.

But before commercial service could realistically begin, Jamison says several pieces of infrastructure that are typically preferred or even required by airlines need to be added. Chief among them is an air traffic control tower, which she said the airport is in the process of adding through a Federal Aviation Administration program that will see the agency provide staffing for a tower if one is built by 2027, although there is a good possibility the deadline will be extended to 2029.

Jamison said a study to determine the size and location of the tower has been completed and the county is now working on getting environmental clearance, with design work to begin after that. Other infrastructure that would eventually be needed includes a terminal building and, likely, a customs facility to open the airport to international flights. The latter, she said, is important because she said the vision is for the airport to be a “key international gateway.”

While the county is building toward that goal, the director said it remains too early to say when — or even if — commercial flights or cargo operations will come to the airport. However, she said she believes “it will happen eventually” in part because the county has been approached by multiple companies that are interested in bringing commercial service to the area and believe there is demand.

Among the major backers of the effort is Riverside County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez, who has spent most of his life living in the eastern Coachella Valley. Perez explained that he sees potential for the airport to be a much stronger engine of economic opportunity and growth for a region that has long struggled with poverty.

He said there is a particularly obvious demand for flights to Mexico that is not currently being filled in the Coachella Valley. He frequently travels there and often sees large numbers of other locals who travel across the border to the airports in Mexicali or Tijuana, or else to Ontario or even Los Angeles, to catch flights bound for the interior of Mexico (the plans for a Palm Springs airport expansion also include adding a customs facility).

“Why not do that here locally where you know that people would use it?” Perez said.

Perez added that he also thinks there is opportunity for manufacturing and other economic activity around an expanded airport, given that Cochran is only about two miles away from the Union Pacific Rail Line. Those tracks could also eventually be part of a proposed passenger rail service that would connect the Coachella Valley to Los Angeles, further increasing the region’s connectivity.

Cost, Palm Springs brand nix massive growth in Thermal

While it will take at least several years to build the kind of infrastructure needed to support commercial flights at Cochran, the airport’s jet-friendly long runways, location away from urban areas and large size (Jamison says the airport is 1,752 acres and has ample space to grow) have led some locals to investigate whether a major expansion makes sense.

The new chair of the Palm Springs Airport Commission, who also chairs its subcommittee for long-range planning, said the subcommittee initially looked into the feasibility of building a new airport or undertaking a massive expansion of the one in Thermal.

Kevin J. Corcoran, the commission chair and a Palm Springs resident, said the idea of an airport in the plentiful open desert north of Interstate 10 was quickly nixed. The FAA said the area is too windy to safely host an airport.

More consideration was given to bringing the growth to Cochran, he said. But the commission found that several factors, including the sheer cost of building all the infrastructure that would be needed and the uncertainty of federal support, tipped the scales in favor of expanding PSP, the official code for Palm Springs' airport.

The airport commission and the Palm Springs City Council have voted in favor of an initial $2.2 billion PSP expansion plan. Any plan to overhaul Cochran to accommodate the 3 million additional passengers expected to fly to the Coachella Valley over the next 20 years would cost far more. And building an entirely new airport could cost as much as $6.5 billion.

“That ($2.2 billion) is just for that structure,” Corcoran said of the Palm Springs expansion. “Imagine if you were putting in fire, sewers… the infrastructure investment to move this airport to Thermal is just overwhelming.”

Perhaps even more importantly, Corcoran said, the city of Palm Springs has long been the hub of both the Coachella Valley’s all-important tourism industry and the distinctive global brand that supports it.

That’s key, he said, because airlines' interest in expanding service to the valley seems to be largely predicated on quick and direct access to Palm Springs itself and its many attractions.

Corcoran said airlines have indicated that for them and their customers, landing at an airport in the middle of Palm Springs is a much more attractive proposition than arriving at a far less famous and more isolated location on the other side of the valley.

The likely upshot is that there wouldn't be the demand to bring anywhere near 3 million extra passengers to a massively expanded Cochran airport, meaning that plan would cost the valley flights and tourism dollars, and perhaps diminish the Palm Springs brand.

“Would people say, ‘They’ve ruined the Palm Springs experience because now I have to schlep down there to Thermal?,’” Corcoran said. “For the demand we have and for the money it’s going to take to do what we're proposing, going somewhere else doesn’t make sense.”

In the past, new airports have been built on the outskirts of some metropolitan areas — notably Denver and Washington, DC — in response to capacity and space limitations at the more central existing airports. But most communities opt to expand their existing airports when there is space and a need to do so.

“We have the space to grow,” said Corcoran. “We have it, and we don't have to buy more land to do it.”

A cautionary tale about the perils of relocating an airport can be found in the now-shuttered Mirabel International Airport in Montreal. It was built in the 1970s on farmland about 30 miles from the city center in response to increasing passenger demands and concerns about the impacts of noise from the existing airport near the city center. But Mirabel saw its last passenger flight depart less than 30 years after it opened, while the 83-year-old airport near the city center carries on.

During Mirabel’s short run, some airlines abandoned the city entirely, plans for highway and mass transit routes never materialized and passenger numbers fell woefully short of expectations.

‘We don’t have to be in competition’

Corcoran also said the commission has learned there is reason to believe that one of the biggest anticipated downsides of airport expansion in Palm Springs might not have the major impact many are worried about.

While an expanded airport will necessarily mean more flights, it won’t necessarily mean double the current number. That's because airlines will be able to replace the smaller planes that service some routes with larger planes. At the same time, Corcoran said, technology improvements are making planes quieter, a trend expected to accelerate.

Even the local leaders who support expanding Cochran airport in Thermal, including Jamison and Perez, said they also support the growth planned for PSP. Their vision for airline flights at Cochran is not as a replacement for a larger Palm Springs airport, but as a complement.

A spokesperson for PSP said the airport’s staff were not aware of specific plans to bring commercial flights to Cochran and were therefore not able to speculate. He added that PSP’s “comprehensive Master Plan efforts continue, and the airport’s focus remains on serving the needs of passengers and stakeholders at PSP.”

“It’s not a substitute, one does not supplant the other. It’s in addition to,” Jamison said of how the county’s ambitions for Cochran fit into the future landscape. “There are airports all over the country that work in great harmony to each other. We don’t have to be in competition at all.”

Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and email him at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Springs airport plans to grow, and so does Thermal’s