Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) wants FAA Administrator Michael Huerta to withdraw the FAA’s cease and desist order, which was issued December 12. The order requires the city to stop attempting to evict the two Santa Monica Airport (SMO) FBOs—American Flyers and Atlantic Aviation. Lieu supports the city’s efforts to close its airport and agrees with the city's position that any obligations it had to keep the airport open due to grant assurances expired in 2014. Airport supporters and the FAA counter that money that the city received in 2003 as an amendment to a 1984 grant extends the requirement to keep the airport open until 2023.
In a letter to Huerta, Lieu wrote, “I am highly disturbed by the [FAA’s] interim cease and desist order that stops Santa Monica from changing two [FBOs] at the Santa Monica Airport. The FAA’s order—which essentially mandates that Santa Monica use two specific private-sector companies for FBO operations—is factually incorrect and appears to contradict FAA practice concerning the operation of small airports.”
In fact, the FAA order does not require the airport to “use…specific private-sector companies for FBO operations,” but instead maintains the status quo, allowing the two FBOs to continue operating until the FAA completes an investigation and issues a final agency decision. The city tried to evict the two FBOs on September 15, issuing 30-day notices to vacate, and also laid plans for eliminating sales of 100LL avgas and petroleum-based jet fuel.
On September 26, the FAA issued a notice of investigation to the city regarding the city’s failure to enter into leases with legitimate tenants that wish to offer aeronautical services at SMO. Although the city filed unlawful detainer actions against the two FBOs on November 4, both continued to operate, and the city never marshaled the resources to operate its own FBO services. The city did ask Long Beach, California-based aviation property management company Aeroplex Group to develop a business plan for a new FBO at SMO, but that appears not to have been implemented.
According to Lieu’s letter, “The FAA’s mission is not to be a shill for corporations. I call on the FAA to live up to its mission by rescinding its overreaching order and, instead, work with the city of Santa Monica.”
In explaining its order, an FAA spokesman earlier provided this statement to AIN: “The FAA issued the cease and desist order to the city of Santa Monica to preserve the status quo while it completes its investigation of the issues in the notice of investigation and the complaints filed by American Flyers and Atlantic Aviation. The order blocks the city’s attempt to evict long-standing providers of critical aeronautical services at an important airport in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.”
"Congressman Lieu is a tiny minority voice of one in Congress in urging SMO closure,” said Dave Hopkins, vice president of the Santa Monica Airport Association. “Thirty-five congressmen and women have likewise signed a letter to FAA in December 2015 urging the agency to protect our nation’s critical aviation infrastructure, specifically SMO. SMO serves our city, region and nation as a critical on-ramp to our nations airways. The city of Santa Monica has a 2016 record six formal complaints to the FAA regarding mismanagement of SMO, generating the current FAA cease and desist order, the only public-use airport in the U.S. ever to receive not one, but two FAA cease and desist orders (2008 and 2016). Santa Monica city council, backed by property developer campaign donations, will stop at nothing to try and close SMO.”