CARLSBAD — United Airlines is expected to begin flying to and from San Francisco and Denver out of McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad beginning in late March next year.
A majority of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a ground lease with United Airlines on Dec. 10. The first United flight out of the airport is expected to take place on March 30, 2026.
Under the agreement, United is expected to provide eight daily flights using a 70-seat Embraer 175 aircraft: two departing flights to San Francisco and two to Denver, along with four arriving flights from those locations. Both destinations are considered major United Airlines hubs.
The lease will last three years, from March 1, 2026, to Feb. 28, 2029, with two extension options.
The agreement is expected to generate $538,722 in revenue during the first year and nearly $1.06 million annually by the second year.
The county has agreed to partially waive fees during the first year of operations, a common practice in the aviation industry and encouraged by the Federal Aviation Administration to incentivize and attract airlines taking risks when expanding into new service areas.
Staff also said the agreement falls under the board’s prior certification of the Program Environmental Impact Report for Palomar Airport’s Master Plan Update in 2021. According to the staff report, a new environmental document is not required after analysis of the lease agreement, which “concluded that the project would result in no new impacts or mitigation measures,” and that “the activity is within the scope of the previously approved project.”
Palomar Airport is one of seven airports owned and operated by the county. The airport has operated in Carlsbad since 1959 and is designated a commercial service airport, according to staff, and is categorized by the FAA as a non-hub primary airport certified to serve scheduled small aircraft between 10 and 30 seats, scheduled large aircraft with 30 or more seats, and unscheduled large airliners.
United operated out of Palomar Airport for nearly 20 years, until 2015, when it switched to larger aircraft that did not fit Palomar’s runway.
Melissa Garrett, a United representative, said the airline looks forward to returning to Palomar Airport.
“This opens up over a thousand destinations worldwide to travelers from the Carlsbad airport,” she said.
The move to allow United’s return to Palomar Airport comes nearly a year after the board approved a two-year lease with American Airlines to provide flights to Phoenix from Carlsbad last January.
Carlsbad-based Citizens for a Friendly Airport (C4FA) subsequently sued the County of San Diego for approving the American Airlines lease in January. The City of Carlsbad joined the lawsuit in November; it is still ongoing.
“This body does not have the authority to change the use of the airport without the permission of the city in the form of a conditional use permit amendment,” said Vickey Syage, president of C4FA, at the board meeting.
Carlsbad residents have largely opposed an increase in commercial flights at Palomar Airport, citing environmental concerns, noise pollution, public safety risks, and negative impacts on the quality of life for residents under the flight paths and nearby.
A majority of public speakers opposed the United Airlines lease. Additionally, the county received 457 comments on the lease, with 342 opposed, 105 in favor, and one neutral.
Opponents argued that the airport is considered a general aviation airport, not a commercial airport, and suggested the lease is part of a plan to extend the airport’s runway.
Dom Betro of the Palomar Airport Action Network, a group representing 25 homeowners’ associations and at least five other community groups, said the county does not know who is actually using the airport.
“They don’t know that these are North County passengers taking these flights,” he said. “They could be anyone. I’d like to see the evidence of that.”
Palomar Airport Association President Alan Baldus, a Carlsbad resident and pilot who supported the United Airlines lease, said those opposed to the agreement do not represent the majority of North County residents.
“These people care, there’s no doubt about that, but the activated resistance are not the representative resistance, they’re outliers, anomalies, exceptions rather than the mainstream,” he said. “The representative majority is what we see every day from the real cross-sections of North County – tens of thousands business people, families, vacationers and tourists who go to the Palomar Airport queue for their flights and appreciate the convenience the commercial service brings to all of our region.”
Jason Haber, the City of Carlsbad’s intergovernmental affairs director, requested that the county first seek and obtain an amendment to the airport’s conditional use permit through the city before considering the United Airlines lease agreement.
Although owned and operated by the county, the airport was annexed into Carlsbad in 1978 under a conditional use permit to provide water, sewer, and other services necessary for airport operations.
“The county’s recent actions to allow larger aircraft to operate through American Airlines demonstrate a shift to higher levels of operations at the airport. Allowing United Airlines would further demonstrate this shift,” Haber said. “The city has offered its opinion that this reflects poorly on responsible stewardship of the airport and its commitment to community engagement to identify strategies for minimizing negative impacts.”
Haber also said the county should wait for the outcome of the existing lawsuit before considering the new lease.
According to county staff, the term “general aviation basic transport” airport no longer exists under FAA standards, which were replaced by a numeric classification system. Palomar Airport is classified as a B2-size airport and has not been recommended for a change to a D3-size airport, thus negating the need to request a conditional use permit amendment from Carlsbad.
Supervisor Jim Desmond noted that United, American and Delta airlines flew out of Palomar in the 1990s.
“I don’t think it’s just general aviation,” he said.
Desmond also said the county cannot reject the lease without a qualifying safety or administrative reason that would affect the airport.
“This is about a ground lease – we really don’t have any grounds to not allow United in the airport in Carlsbad,” he said.
The board approved the ground lease by a 4-1 vote, with Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, who represents Carlsbad, opposed.
Lawson-Remer said she would be open to supporting the ground lease if United Airlines agreed to mandatory noise restrictions before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.
Garrett said she could not guarantee that agreement during the meeting, but would take the request back to United for further discussion.
While United Airlines agreed to operate under a voluntary noise-abatement procedure between 7:30 a.m. and 9:50 p.m., that restriction is not mandatory.
Lawson-Remer encouraged the county to consider making noise abatement mandatory rather than voluntary, but staff said such an effort would be expensive and difficult to implement through the FAA, particularly given that newer aircraft are more efficient and less noisy.
“It’s not only that I feel very boxed in and threatened and bullied to some extent, frankly, by the federal government about what we do in our own community – I also know that there are good reasons that you would want to have an airport that would provide convenience and access to people in North County, but that needs to balanced with the impacts on local residents and what does it do to our community and quality of life,” she said. “I think we’re missing the balance at this time. There’s not sufficient attention being paid to the impact on the people who live near and around the airport, and the fact that the City of Carlsbad, which is 20% of my district, as a whole are deeply concerned.”
