JWA considers restaurant alternatives

Paul Clinton

JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT -- If you can’t bring the horse to water, bring the

water to the horse.

With tougher security measures keeping friends and family out of the

airport’s boarding area, John Wayne Airport managers are working to bring

pushcarts of food and snacks outside the secure area of the Thomas Riley

Terminal.

Officials in the airport’s business development division are seeking

approval from the Orange County Health Care Agency to use the pushcarts

to dispense burgers, cinnamon buns and coffee in areas outside the

screening and boarding areas.

Many of the airport’s restaurants are inside the secure area past the

X-ray screeners. Among them are McDonald’s, Cinnabon, Pizza Hut, Pretzel

Mania and Starbucks Coffee.

When the airport reopened two days after the Sept. 11 terrorist

attacks, only ticketed passengers could eat at those concessions. The

Federal Aviation Administration required airports, including John Wayne,

to install a wide range of security measures.

Only two snack shops exist in the terminal outside the secure area.

Before Sept. 11, anyone could enter the secure area to eat.

Those shops are operated by Bethesda, Maryland-based HMS Hosts. Calls

to the company’s spokesman were not returned.

In the wake of the attacks, airport managers gave the concessionaires

permission to stay open fewer hours, McCarley said, to ease the financial

crunch resulting from a dramatic drop in business.

In return, the concessionaires had to promise to keep one of the snack

shops outside the secure area open at all times. The shops are now

operating on a rotation -- one early that closes at 2 p.m., the other on

afternoon hours that closes at 8 p.m., employee Dora Franco said.

* Paul Clinton covers the environment and John Wayne Airport. He may

be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail ato7

[email protected] .