San Bernardino International Airport

Norton Air Force Base

The air base opened shortly after the attacks on Pearl Harbor to protect the southern California area. Norton was placed on the Department of Defense's base closure list in 1989 (the same year that the DoD signed the Federal Facilities Agreement with the EPA).

The closure was cited as due to environmental wastes, inadequate facilities, and air traffic congestion. The last of the facilities on the base were closed in 1995.

Status

Most parts of San Bernardino International Airport were completed in 2011. However, a customs facility is still under construction. San Bernardino International Airport was built to conform to aviation-demand modeling and allocations performed as part of the 2008 Regional Transportation Plan (R.T.P.) of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the Metropolitan Planning Organization for San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, Ventura, Imperial, and Orange counties.

The 2008 R.T.P. projects 9.4 million passengers and 1,290,000 tons of air cargo at San Bernardino International Airport in 2035 with improved ground access provided, in part, by high-speed rail. The California High-Speed Rail Authority is currently performing alternatives analysis regarding the Los Angeles-to-San Diego segment, which includes, along the I-215 alignment, an optional station location at Rialto Avenue and E Street in the city of San Bernardino. The 2008 R.T.P states, "The high speed, reliability, and predictability of high-speed airport access will be needed to overcome mounting and increasingly unpredictable traffic congestion (on area freeways)."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are available on call to clear imported goods. The airport is used as a base for United States Forest Service planes fighting forest fires. Several hangars that were formerly empty have recently been occupied by civilian-owned aircraft maintenance companies. The runway is 10,000 feet (3,000 m) long, easily accommodating air cargo aircraft.

The airport and some of the surrounding areas are within the city of San Bernardino and the Inland Valley Development Agency. The surrounding areas are being redeveloped by Hillwood.

The airport has served as the filming location for both the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious and the 2004 Martin Scorsese film The Aviator using a Lockheed Constellation preserved by the Airline History Museum, and flown in for the shoot, were done at San Bernardino International, with one hangar "dressed" as a Trans World Airlines facility.

Passenger terminal

San Bernardino International Airport has a completed passenger terminal that is capable of accommodating both domestic and international commercial service. However, it has no scheduled service.

Runway

San Bernardino International Airport is capable of accommodating the largest commercial airliners in service today.

10,000′ × 200′ (3,048 × 61 meters) Rated for Airbus A380 at 1,300,000 lbs.

Location

The airport is located about two miles east of downtown San Bernardino and 14 miles northeast of downtown Riverside. Motorists can either use the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10), Barstow-Downtown San Bernardino-Riverside Freeway (Interstate 215), or the Foothill Freeway (State Route 210) to access the airport. It is also served by Omnitrans Route 8 and, indirectly, by the San Bernardino Line and the Inland Empire-Orange County Line of the Metrolink regional rail service.

San Bernardino County grand jury and FBI investigations

An audit completed June 2011 at the request of a grand jury investigation found examples of potential mismanagement and financial irregularities. In September 2011, as part of a special joint corruption task force, the FBI raided the offices of the airport and the home of airport developer Scot Spencer to secure internal documents. In late September 2011, Don Rogers, the Director of the SBIA Authority (SBIAA) resigned. The grand jury report questioned a relationship between Rogers and Spencer, including a settlement of a legal claim by companies owned by Spencer against the SBIAA for almost $1 million without ascertaining whether Spencer's companies suffered damages equivalent to such an amount.