Others have tried before, but maybe this time will work.
There's a lot more demand for SNA now than there was three or five years ago, mainly due to the continuing housing boom in southern Orange County. If Camp Pendleton were to disappear, there'd be nothing but houses between Dana Point and Carslbad within a year or two.
Both the LA and SAN metro area saw just over 12% growth between 1990 and 2000.
Irvine grew by 29%, Oceanside by 25%, Santa Ana by 15%, Costa Mesa by 12%. And those are just the towns with populations of 100K or more.
Orange County had a great opportunity to move their airport to El Toro, and passed on it. With the continued growth, they may come to regret that. That was one of the reasons Jetblue mentioned when they went into Long Beach. They thought they could benefit from the continued growth in the area and attract people to a less congested airport. It still remains to be seen how profitable that move was...
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