CLEVELAND, Ohio-- United Airlines' decision to cut almost two-thirds of its flights at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport has reignited a decades-old debate on whether Hopkins' sister airport on Lake Erie is needed – and if not, how the 450-acre airfield could be transformed.

Deactivating the airport has never gained much traction given opposition from city and airport officials, plus financial and regulatory hurdles set by the Federal Aviation Administration. They say Burke is a reliever airport for Hopkins, absorbing the traffic of corporate jets, air taxi services and flight schools that would create congestion at Hopkins.

But with United pulling its hub out of Cleveland, the air service market in Northeast Ohio has changed:

• Hopkins by June will have fewer than a third of the annual operations it can handle before running into significant flight delays. Burke already has less than one-fourth the traffic it can have without delays.

• Other airports in the region, including Akron-Canton Airport and Cuyahoga County Airport, are also operating at far less than their maximum capacity.

• Burke operates at a loss -- $1.3 million in 2013 alone -- deficits that are paid for with landing fees charged to the airlines at Hopkins.

• The subsidizing of Burke is set against tightening pressure on Hopkins to stay on top of its debt. Hopkins owes $845 million from its purchase of the I-X Center and construction of a runway and Concourse D, lined with gates for the regional flights that United is dropping. Fitch Ratings downgraded most of Hopkins' debt in February, citing concerns the airport could lose as much as a third of its traffic.

"When Hopkins was in its heyday it could support Burke," said Richard Knoth, a board member of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority. "That day is over."

Activity at Burke, Hopkins is nearly half of what it was in 2000

Operations at Burke peaked in 2000 with 100,000 takeoffs and landings, falling by 2013 to 55,000, according to FAA records.

Takeoffs and landings involving separate aircraft may be closer to 40,000 or less, given the activity of Burke's four flight schools. Student pilots make multiple "touch-and-go" runs in a single lesson, and each of those counts as a separate landing and departure, skewing annual counts.

There are about 45 percent fewer flights at both Burke and Hopkins today than at their peak of activity 13 years ago. Like airports nationwide, they have been hurt by the slump in air travel after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a sharp recession, surging fuel prices and industry consolidation.

Airline consultant Robert Mann said the "fortress hubs" that survived consolidation -- places like Atlanta, Chicago, Houston -- are busy with hub-to-hub traffic and brand new activity in locations such as the far west, where oil and gas exploration is booming and with it, personnel, logistics and "wealth effect" travel.

The losers in the industry mash-up are smaller cities that relied primarily on regional jet service and former hubs.

The trends have taxed Hopkins, where takeoffs and landings slid from 332,000 in 2000 to 181,000 in 2013. This March they were down again, to an annual pace of 177,000, according to FAA and Hopkins data.



By the time Hopkins is a former hub -- when United is finished chopping flights at the end of June -- the airport will be at the level of about 109,000 yearly takeoffs and landings, even adding in the new nonstops announced by Frontier Airlines and Delta Air Lines.

That means that Burke's annual flights today are fewer than the flights Hopkins is about to lose.

Other airports in Northeast Ohio also are operating at levels lower than they're capable of handling.

Operations in 2013 at Cuyahoga County Airport were less than one-sixth of its maximum capacity. The Richmond Heights airport has an instrument landing system to guide approaching aircraft similar to Burke's system. It could handle all of Burke's flight school business and most of its private jet and prop plane activity, said an air industry official familiar with traffic at the two airports.

The county airport does have restrictions that don't figure at Burke. It can handle planes with up to 30 passengers but no more, and because of runway weight limits it can't land jet airliners such as the Boeing 737 or 747. Those planes could land at Burke, though the lakefront airport doesn't promote commercial service and hasn't had it since the 1970s.

Cleveland's Director of Port Control Ricky Smith said Burke is no different than many general aviation airports in that they tend to run in the red and require a subsidy. And though Hopkins does have space for more flights, the small planes and flight training at Burke could pose operational and safety problems if moved to Hopkins, he said.

This graph from a 2008 master plan for Burke Lakefront Airport gauged the effect of moving Burke's flights to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. It showed that Hopkins would run out of room by 2019 if it absorbed all Burke operations. With declining flights at both airports, their combined activity today is significantly lower than projected in this analysis.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson also firmly supports keeping Burke open, and putting to rest speculation over its future.

"This position has created certainty in the development world and is allowing the city's lakefront development plan to proceed. Operationally, Burke is an integral part of the Cleveland airport system. It adds value to overall air service delivery in Cleveland," Jackson spokeswoman Maureen Harper said.

The most recent master plan for Burke attributed a $48.5 million economic impact from the airport in 2004, the latest estimate available.

FAA not in the business of closing airports

Even if more people got behind the idea of plowing up Burke's runways, there could be a battle getting the FAA to sign on.

The agency is generally loath to close an airport. Beyond regulatory safety, the FAA's mission is to foster aviation. It helps insure that by terms tied to the money it hands out to airports for airfield and terminal improvements. Airports can't close without FAA approval for 20 years after they receive a federal grant, unless they get some kind of waiver from the FAA.

Burke's last award was $18 million in 2012 for runway improvements. The city also might have to repay other grants if Burke is shut, Smith said.

At FAA headquarters in Washington, spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency "very, very rarely would say 'fine, close the airport.'"

Sometimes the FAA does agree to deactivate an airfield and even works out deals to offset grant repayments.

Kansas City wanted to build a rail and truck freight distribution center on the site of Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, which served business jets and was losing an average of $1.5 million a year. The FAA eventually granted the release. The agency noted that losses at Richards-Gebaur were draining profits from Kansas City International Airport that otherwise would be put toward improvements.

Blue Ash Airport served as a general aviation reliever for the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport until it was closed by Cincinnati in 2012 amid declining revenues.

City Solicitor John Curp said Cincinnati freed itself of FAA mandates by not accepting airport grants at Blue Ash for more than 20 years, and convinced the FAA the airport was a burden on taxpayers.

So how about Burke?

<a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/7898109/">Should Burke Lakefront Airport close?</a>

The FAA said Cleveland would have to demonstrate that closing the airport would achieve a net benefit to civil aviation through increased efficiency in the nation's system of airports.

And if the FAA did give its blessing, it would probably require Cleveland to invest the fair market value of the land and the unamortized value of the grants in the local airport system, Brown said.

What's down below

Questions about land leases and pollution linger over any talk of changing Burke from an airport into something else.

Burke is built on fill dumped on the bottom of Lake Erie, and title to "submerged land" belongs to the state of Ohio. Cleveland holds a 50-year lease for the Burke property that expires in 2028. With Burke's dwindling vitality, Knoth said, the state should nix extending the lease.

The foundation of Burke is sediment dredged from the Cuyahoga River, dirt from the excavation for the Cleveland Press building at East Ninth Street and demolition material. Garbage was burned on about 20 acres on the east side of Burke until the practice was banned in the 1950s in response to a lawsuit.

An estimated 90 percent of the airport is on "clean fill' with 10 percent built on garbage, Ted Esborn, an environmental attorney at McDonald Hopkins, said during a 2003 Levin College forum on Burke.

"I have recollections as a little boy driving along there smelling it," Esborn recalled last week. "There would certainly be issues in the landfill section."

In 1987, the Ohio EPA concluded there was no evidence of hazardous material dumped at Burke, and that most of its foundation is construction and demolition debris, according to a report prepared for the Cleveland Waterfront Coalition and EcoCity Cleveland in 2002.

Smith is not convinced.

"The airport sits on a former municipal landfill which is compromised by the constant-changing Lake Erie water table," he said in an email. "The environmental issues with the land would require significant investment just to prepare the land for development."

State looking at Burke and other GA airports

Separate from the jolt to air service from United's decision to dehub at Hopkins – and what, if anything, that spells for Burke – the Ohio Department of Transportation is examining the economic impact and role that Burke and Ohio's 96 other general aviation airports play in their communities.

ODOT, through its Office of Aviation, is involved in airport planning, grant administration, safety inspections and other activities at Ohio airports.

ODOT says its Ohio Airports Focus Study will help the state and the FAA make hard decisions on proposed airport development in a time of limited funding. ODOT plans to report on its findings in July and August.

Northeast Ohio's air system includes three commercial airports -- Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown-Warren; a long-runway airport in Mansfield; the Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights; Lost Nation Municipal Airport in Willoughby; Lorain County Regional Airport; Kent State University Airport; Ashtabula County Airport; and others.

"It does make you wonder, are they all necessary," said Kristie Van Auken, senior vice president at Akron-Canton Airport.

The upshot of the survey of Ohio airports may be more about which get funding and how much, rather than calls for airports to be closed.

"Part of the FAA's mission is to facilitate air transportation, so the agency is naturally very reluctant to shut down either commercial or general aviation airports," said Philip Recht, who worked as chief counsel with the U.S. Department of Transportation during the Clinton Administration.

Recht, now head of the Los Angeles office of law firm Mayer Brown, said general aviation airports have behind them a powerful political bloc -- the people who fly their private jets into the airports and house their planes there.

"They fight very hard and are very powerful and well-connected," Recht said. Often leading the charge is the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the largest aviation association in the world with almost 400,000 members.

But Knoth thinks there could be a local groundswell in Cleveland on the other side.

"If you took a poll of the region today," he said, "overwhelmingly there would be support for what we're talking about."

Plain Dealer researcher Jo Ellen Corrigan contributed to this report.

To view historic images of Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport, click on the blue links below. These photos are part of The Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection:

1930: Airport site will later be filled with new land (Cleveland News)

Dedication photos

1947: Building an airstrip; Muni Stadium in distance (Horton / Cleveland News)

1947

1958: U.S. Army Nike site in front of airport runways (Bob Runyan / Cleveland News)

1958

1961 Terminal Tower visible behind Burke's own terminal

