By Stephen Witt, Los Angeles County Politics
When LA County Aviation Commissioner Christopher Thomas stood before his colleagues at Whiteman Airport last October and warned against closure, he invoked a striking number: a 2020 study, he said, showed the Pacoima airfield contributes more than $100 million annually to the surrounding community.
“Over the next 10 years, how will you replace a billion dollars of value to our community?” Thomas asked. “That’s number one.”
Los Angeles County Politics noted at the time that the figure was unsubstantiated and had not been broken down into profit and loss. Now, seven months later, county financial records obtained by LACP offer the closest thing yet to an actual answer — and the gap between the commissioner’s claim and the county’s own numbers is worth examining.
According to a special airport-by-airport financial report prepared for the LA County Aviation Commission and provided to LACP this week by the Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), Whiteman Airport generated total revenue of $5,267,767 in fiscal year 2023-24, against total expenditures of $3,363,599, for an operating surplus of $1,904,168.
That surplus makes Whiteman the most profitable of LA County’s five airports — and the one keeping the entire system in the black. Without Whiteman’s contribution, the county’s Aviation Enterprise Fund would have run a deficit in FY 2023-24. The system’s combined surplus that year was $828,843, meaning Whiteman alone generated more than twice the system’s net gain.
It also means the $100 million figure — almost certainly derived from an economic multiplier methodology that counts every dollar spent by every pilot on fuel, food, and maintenance, and then ripples it through the regional economy — bears no relationship to what the county actually collects, spends, or nets at the airport.
The Maintenance Gap
The most striking expenditure figure is what Whiteman did not spend. Facilities maintenance and repair for the entire 170-acre airport totaled just $16,650 for the year. Brackett Field in La Verne, a 276-acre general aviation airport nearly 100 acres larger than Whiteman, spent $72,189 on facilities maintenance that same year. Compton/Woodley Airport, at 77 acres, spent $18,905.
Whiteman’s revenue streams break into two main categories. Lease revenue — hangar rents, tie-down fees, and ground leases — accounted for $3,318,438, or roughly 63 cents of every dollar the airport took in. Fuel sales generated another $1,886,704.
On the expenditure side, the Aviation Division’s internal services charged to Whiteman totaled $899,356 — the single largest cost item. Utilities ran $274,224. Security contract costs came to $95,774. Fuel purchases to supply the airport’s fuel sales operation cost $1,300,233.
Notably, Whiteman collected zero fuel flowage fees in FY 2023-24 — the per-gallon charge assessed to fuel suppliers operating on airport property — while Brackett Field collected $16,477 and San Gabriel Valley Airport collected $19,545 on comparable operations. Why Whiteman is not collecting flowage fees is a question the county has not addressed.
The maintenance figure is particularly notable against the backdrop of the county’s own findings. A 2025 aeronautical rent study prepared as part of the ongoing Trifiletti Consulting review found that most Whiteman hangars are rated in average to poor condition, with only medium T-hangars meeting a good standard. The Small T-Hangars in Rows U and T — rated poor in both amenities and condition — show just a 6% vacancy rate, suggesting demand exists even for substandard facilities. Tie-down vacancy stands at 68%. Whiteman generated $1,904,168 in surplus in FY 2023-24. It spent $16,650 on facilities maintenance.
The Junkyard Economy
The maintenance figures raise a question that goes to the heart of what kind of airport Whiteman actually is — and who it actually serves.
Tie-down spaces, where flyable aircraft park in the open, sit 68% empty. Yet the airport generates $3,318,438 in annual lease revenue, much of it from enclosed hangars. That revenue picture is consistent with an airport where some hangar tenants are storing aircraft that may not be airworthy — planes that cannot fly but still require covered, secure storage and generate rental income regardless.
If that is the case, the poor condition of the hangars may not be incidental. There is no economic pressure to renovate a storage facility whose occupants have no alternative — an inoperable aircraft cannot be flown to a better airport. The county collects the rent. The hangar deteriorates. The surplus is transferred to the pooled fund. And the surrounding Pacoima community absorbs the safety risk of operating aircraft departing from a facility that has experienced at minimum three crashes in the past six years — November 2020, April 2022, and April 2026.
LACP has previously reported allegations that non-airworthy aircraft occupy hangar space at Whiteman while airworthy aircraft sit on waiting lists. The county has neither confirmed nor denied those allegations. FAA Grant Assurance 22 prohibits airport sponsors from allowing hangars to be used to warehouse non-airworthy aircraft while pilots on waiting lists cannot obtain space. Whether that standard is being met at Whiteman is a question federal regulators have not publicly addressed.
The junkyard parallel is not offered lightly. There is real money in operating storage facilities. There is less money in operating airports. If Whiteman’s lease revenue is being sustained in part by non-airworthy aircraft paying hangar rent they cannot escape, the county’s $1.9 million annual surplus looks less like evidence of a thriving aviation facility and more like the financial profile of a premium storage operation — one whose deteriorating infrastructure reflects not neglect but rational economic behavior on the county’s part.
The Contradictions
The crash history has also exposed a tension in the pro-airport coalition’s own argument. For months, supporters cited Whiteman’s economic vitality as the central reason to keep it open. After the April 20 crash — when a Cessna 172 struck power lines on approach to Runway 12 and came down inverted in a Pacoima parking lot, leaving the pilot critically injured — the same coalition called on the county to invest in infrastructure improvements, implicitly acknowledging the airport’s deteriorating condition.
County financial records obtained by LACP show Whiteman generated a $1,904,168 operating surplus in FY 2023-24 while spending $16,650 on facilities maintenance. The records offer no explanation of where the surplus went, only that it flowed into a pooled Aviation Enterprise Fund that does not break out spending by airport. If the airport has been starved of maintenance funding as the coalition now suggests, the financial records raise an unavoidable question: where did nearly two million dollars in annual surplus go?
The Pooled Fund Problem
The airport-by-airport report is a special document prepared for the Aviation Commission. The county’s standard budget — the M02 Aviation Enterprise Fund — pools all five airports together, making it impossible for the public to track any individual airport’s financial performance through normal budget processes.
That opacity has real consequences. The pooled FY 2025-26 budget document provided alongside the airport-specific report shows the system’s total surplus declining sharply — from $995,707 in FY 2023-24 to $590,455 in FY 2024-25, with an estimated $409,000 in FY 2025-26. The county provided a pooled five-airport report covering FY 2024-25 — a document that could only have been produced using individual airport data — but did not provide Whiteman’s standalone figures for that year despite a specific request.
Without airport-by-airport breakdowns for those more recent years, there is no public way to know whether Whiteman is driving that decline, subsidizing other airports, or holding steady.
The FAA Angle
The pooled accounting structure raises a question that goes beyond transparency: it may also create federal compliance exposure.
Under federal law, when an airport accepts federal grants, all revenue — rents, fees, fuel charges — must be used only for the capital or operating costs of the airport or the airport system. Grant Assurance 25 requires that all revenues generated by the airport be expended for the capital or operating costs of the airport, the local airport system, or other facilities owned and operated by the airport owner that are directly and substantially related to air transportation.
The county’s pooled M02 fund is structured as an airport system fund, which, under FAA policy, is permitted. But the nearly $2.5 million annual administrative overhead booked centrally — covering Aviation Division headquarters costs, legal expenses, insurance, and software — raises a narrower question: are those costs legitimately airport-system expenses, or does some portion represent general county overhead being charged against airport revenue? The FAA’s enforcement arsenal for confirmed revenue diversion violations includes withholding of future grants and civil penalties of up to three times the amount diverted.
The October 2025 Trifiletti presentation is also notable for what it confirms about emergency services. The document states explicitly: “No emergency services are based at WHP.” That finding directly supports LACP’s prior reporting that the LA County Fire Department’s Air Operations unit is housed not at Whiteman but at the adjacent Barton Heliport — a separately designated FAA facility at 12605 Osborne Street with its own federal identifier, KPAI — a distinction with significant implications for any closure debate.
What Wasn’t Answered
The financial records raise a question about institutional accountability that LACP has previously reported, but that the county has never directly addressed. Jason Morgan, chief of the LA County Public Works Aviation Division, is the senior county official responsible for managing Whiteman Airport’s operations and overseeing the financial structure documented in these reports.
Morgan previously served as assistant manager of Whiteman Airport when it was operated by a private management company — giving him direct operational knowledge of the facility whose surplus, maintenance spending, and hangar conditions are now under scrutiny.
LACP’s financial inquiries were routed through the DEO’s press office, with responses coordinated among four DEO officials. Morgan was not among them. LACP has not been able to reach Morgan directly, and the county has not made him available for comment.
The DEO’s response this week was a partial disclosure. The agency provided the FY 2023-24 airport-by-airport report — confirming Whiteman’s standalone financial performance for the first time in LACP’s reporting — along with the pooled three-year M02 report.
What it did not provide: FY 2024-25 airport-specific figures for Whiteman, any financial documents prepared in connection with the Trifiletti Consulting land use study, any profit-and-loss summary connected to the Aviation Commission’s ongoing rent study deliberations, and — a question LACP is now formally adding to the record — how many aircraft currently based at Whiteman Airport are non-airworthy, and what the county’s policy is for monitoring and enforcing hangar use compliance under FAA Grant Assurance 22.
All four were specifically requested or are now on the record as outstanding questions.
The $2.1 million Trifiletti study — originally contracted at approximately $1.9 million and quietly extended by $200,000 — is now expected to be completed this summer.
