Santa Barbara built it, but they did not come. Five years after the cavernous John T. Rickard airport terminal opened to much fanfare, the $37 million building sits strikingly empty. Sporadic footsteps echo through its high-ceilinged entryway, and bored employees lean behind a long row of empty ticket counters. One worker recently called it a “mausoleum.”
The 60,000-square-foot terminal was built to accommodate more than 1.3 million annual passengers, but it currently serves fewer than half that number. Since the new facility opened in August 2011, replacing the older, charming, if funky, terminal, the airport has reported $2.5 million in losses. In the nine years prior, it generated $6.3 million worth of income.
These nail-biting declines, say city officials, can be blamed on global forces outside their control. Since 2005, Santa Barbara Airport has lost 26 percent of flights and passengers, a similar fate faced by small-hub airports across the country. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, quadrupling fuel prices, two economic downturns, and stricter pilot-licensing standards forced all major carriers to either upend their business plans or go bankrupt. That’s meant overall fewer flights.