Why this matters
The lawsuit is the latest in a yearslong dispute among Carlsbad residents, the city of Carlsbad and San Diego County over quality-of-life and environmental concerns at the airport.
A group of Carlsbad residents has filed a new lawsuit against San Diego County to slow what they see as McClellan-Palomar Airport’s troubling growth.
Lawyer Cory Briggs filed the lawsuit in Superior Court last week on behalf of his clients, a nonprofit group called Citizens for a Friendly Airport. It is the third lawsuit in a North County dispute over the airport’s expansion plans and the return of commercial flights after a decade without them.
The suit accuses the county of violating the California Environmental Quality Act and a conditional use permit with the city of Carlsbad in its recent approval of United Airlines flights at the airport. It asks a judge to determine the approval was illegal and should be voided because the county didn’t prepare an environmental impact report. It also claims the county has said Palomar Airport is a “general aviation airport,” which means that it would not have commercial flights.
Some Carlsbad residents want the convenience of more commercial flights in North County. Other residents have quality-of-life and environmental concerns.
Donna Durckel, a county spokesperson, said a sufficient environmental review has already taken place, and that the analysis found the additional flights would result in “no new impacts.”
She also said the Federal Aviation Administration identifies the airport as a “commercial service” airport in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems and that it has authorized the airport to provide commercial service since 1996 as well as support general aviation such as corporate and private jets.
In the past, the county has said that adding commercial flights did not necessitate changing the airport’s classification.
A yearslong dispute
San Diego County owns Palomar Airport and has operated it in Carlsbad since it replaced Del Mar Airport in 1959.
It offered commercial flights until 2015 when United Airlines pulled out because it was switching to larger aircrafts that would not fit on the runway. Commercial flights returned when the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved leases with American and United airlines last year.
The American Airlines flights began in February and the United flights are set to start in March.
The two carriers expect to add a combined six flights a day as they begin operating out of the airport a few miles southeast of downtown Carlsbad: American Airlines flies twice daily to Phoenix, and United will fly twice to San Francisco and twice to Denver.
A Carlsbad city representative and several residents objected to the additional flights at a hearing regarding the United lease at the December Board of Supervisors meeting. They said they are concerned the airport does not have a mandatory curfew and that it bombards them with noise and environmental effects day and night.
The county and the FAA maintain that it must defer decisions on additional flights to the FAA because should the FAA deem flights safe, the county risks being considered discriminatory if it rejects an airline’s plans.
United didn’t wait for the county’s approval of the lease to begin selling United flights online. Those flights were on sale well before the day of the vote.
The nonprofit Citizens for a Friendly Airport first sued the county in 2018 on environmental and land use claims over its approval of a 20-year master plan that potentially allowed for larger aircraft with higher speeds. The group won that lawsuit and the county approved the master plan in 2021 with the condition that the county modify its conditional use permit with the city of Carlsbad before upgrading the airport.
Last year, the nonprofit sued the county over its approval of the American Airlines lease. Carlsbad joined the lawsuit in November, claiming the lease violated the city’s conditional use permit of the airport.
Will Carlsbad join the latest legal challenge against the United Airlines lease?
Residents went to the Carlsbad City Council meeting on Tuesday to ask it to do so.
“Thank you for standing up for Carlsbad residents,” Citizens for a Friendly Airport President Vickey Syage said. “The county has shown over decades that it has not been forthright about Palomar airport. To the public: We, Carlsbad, decide how Palomar airport is used, not the county. The city of Carlsbad retains local control over its use, and we are committed to defending it.”