Airport parking at San Diego's Lindbergh Field can be difficult.

We have posted below an article from the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper written about the problem.

Using a Professional Livery service such as Beach Limo for your airport transportation relieves you the hassle of finding a parking space. 

It often happens that just when one is running late, traffic has been a bear, an accident was narrowly avoided because of a urgent cell phone call, one gets to the airport in the nick of time only to find out there are no parking slots to be had.  Desperate, they head to outside lot, find a spot, drag the luggage over to the office only to learn that the shuttle bus has just pulled out.  And, when they finally return from their trip the cost for parking is astronomical.

Avoid the hassle, let Beach Limo provide your airport transportation.  One of our friendly, professional drivers will handle the traffic while you can comfortably and safely make your phone calls, check your PDA or laptop, confirm your schedule, etc.

We drop you right at the curb at the airport terminal where you can check your luggage.

In additional to San Diego's Lindbergh Field we also are licensed by and provide regular transportation to the Carlsbad Palomar Airport, the Orange County John Wayne Airport, the Long Beach Airport, the Ontario Airport and the Los Angeles Airport.

Let Beach Limo provide you with a comfortable, no hassle ride to the airport.

More motorists at airport

By Mark Sauer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

December 16, 2006

His traffic-cop whistle pierced the low din of loudspeaker announcements, passing cars and idling engines.

Reaching for his ticket book, Dwayne Santana bellowed: “Hey! Whose red Pontiac?”

He didn't have to ask twice.

A petite blond woman jogged toward the car parked curbside at the airport. She hollered “I love you!” over her shoulder to her departing mother, and “I'm sorry” to Santana, then jumped inside and took off.

“Nobody likes seeing me,” Santana smiled. “I'm like the dentist.”

The daily drill for Santana and fellow Airport Authority Security Officers is to keep drivers from dawdling at ever-more-crowded Lindbergh Field while dropping off or picking up passengers.

Their thankless job is busier than ever these days. Lindbergh's parking lots are swollen as never before and things figure to get worse now that the holiday travel season is upon us.

“There is no doubt that we need more parking. Many days our main lots are at capacity,” said Jim Myhers, manager of ground transportation and land site operations for the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

“People there to pick someone up need to use our close-in lots, and we are not meeting those demands.”

On a typical day, 40,000 passengers arrive or depart on 600 flights at Lindbergh Field.

In 2005, the passenger total was 17.4 million, a better-than 6 percent increase over the previous year. The number of operations (flights coming or going) totaled 220,210, more than 5 percent higher than in 2004.

Lots are most likely to fill up on midweek days, Myhers said. Business travelers tend to leave their cars in the main airport lots from Tuesday through Thursday, though off-site parking is cheaper.

People wishing to park for 20 or 30 minutes to fetch family or friends frequently encounter an employee in a golf car at the lot entrance warning them there are no spaces left.

The rule, which has been tightened along with all airport security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is that vehicles can stop briefly in front of terminal buildings for loading and unloading. Period.

It is a rule many try to bend.

An easy solution, airport officials emphasize, is for people meeting passengers to park in the relatively new Cell Phone lot on Harbor Drive across from the Coast Guard Station.

The free lot, which has 60 spaces and portable lavatories, is a place to wait (up to an hour) for a call and mere minutes from the terminal doors. “But the public just doesn't seem to know it's there,” Santana said.

Most drivers meeting passengers choose to cruise slowly past the three terminals' baggage areas and linger as long as possible. That's when they encounter Santana & company.

“You spot a car, the driver makes eye contact and you shoo him along. Now he knows that I know he's buzzing around,” said Santana, a supervisor and eight-year veteran of the airport-traffic detail.

“I'm often asked what the record is for the number of times a car cruised the circuit before finally hooking up with a passenger. Would you believe it's more than 30?”

Frustrated cruisers occasionally vent their wrath on airport traffic officers. “We're on the front lines,” Santana said, though he estimates that officers have words with fewer than 1 percent of all drivers.

“I've heard every excuse,” said Santana, noting that his favorite movie scene is the increasingly aggressive curbside loudspeaker recording which opens the 1980 spoof “Airplane!”

“The excuses all amount to: 'I just need a couple of minutes to run in and find somebody.' The funniest ever was this guy going about 0.75 mph right next to the curb. He says, 'I'm still moving, I'm not parked, I'm not waiting; you can't do anything to me.' I just had to chuckle.”

Myhers said officers write about 10 tickets at $67 each to curbside dwellers every day, but he can count the number of cars towed from the curb each year on one hand.

“The (Transportation Security Administration) requirements are strict about cars stopped near airport buildings, and that's true for airports across the country,” Myhers said. “But our officers are not sworn personnel.

“If an encounter escalates, they can alway call in the Harbor Police, the law-enforcement agency at the airport. That is very rare.”

Unfortunately, Myhers said, there is no relief in sight for Lindbergh lot cruisers.

A decision on options being considered for the airport's first parking structure (with 5,000 spaces) was postponed by the Airport Authority last month.

“Even if a decision were made soon, it would be years before the new parking would be available,” Myhers said.

Mark Sauer: (619) 293-2227; mark.sauer@uniontrib.com