by Kevin Sullivan / Times of San Diego / Nov. 3, 2025
San Diego City Council Resolution 280194 of June 1992 declared the city would not develop Montgomery-Gibbs airport for the full range of general aviation aircraft nor pursue a strategy leading to commercial or passenger services. The city’s Airports Advisory Committee is now proposing projects that may nullify this resolution.
The cleverly worded Airport Master Plan proposal to “remove the displaced threshold on runway 28R” will expand the airport so more, larger, heavier and noisier planes can operate from there. The proposal’s wording disguises the actual meaning which is to relocate the runway’s landing area 1,077 feet farther East.
This is what the council stopped in 1992 — building a longer runway. The neighborhoods of Navajo, Allied Gardens and Grantville are under the flight path.
Moving the landing area farther east may also mean passenger planes on approach are in closer proximity to the power lines that caused the tragic May 2025 crash in Murphy Canyon that killed six people.
The proposal is poorly drafted. The truth is, the number and type of aircraft to operate from Montgomery-Gibbs in the future is unknown, because the forecasts are all inadequate. There is no reasonable understanding of what the airfield requirements will be going forward. And no actual passenger data for Montgomery-Gibbs is given in the reports.
This draft planning document is supposed to be effective for 20 years. Only ten years of that period are left — and it is still in draft form. An effective plan should have been released ten years ago. The last approved plan was released by SANDAG in 1984. Since the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority and its Airport Land Use Commission were established in 2000, the plan has been the city’s responsibility to initiate.
The proposal will commit tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars to construction projects at the field without sufficient data to justify a requirement. And keep in mind that SANDAG determined in its 2021 Regional Airport Strategic Plan that Montgomery-Gibbs was not to be in the group of airports to optimize in the region.
The proposal could be heard by the City Council as early as December. Send your comments on expansions before Nov. 23 by emailing them to PlanningCEQA@sandiego.gov.
And write to your council member and tell them you object to the proposed projects at the airfield.
Kevin Sullivan is a member of the Allied Gardens Grantville Community Council and the Navajo Community Planning group.
Are jets or other aircraft flying in and out of these small, general aviation airports subject to the same aircraft noise and curfew limitations in force at SD International?