The Brief

More than half a year after January’s fires, utilities are slowly moving forward on their plans to put power lines underground.

Along the coast and in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, the details for the plans are lacking — and in the case of the Palisades, yet to be developed.

As survivors start filing the paperwork to rebuild their homes, they worry they’re putting the cart before the horse.

In Altadena, many fire survivors are asking — is the Southern California Edison work to bury power lines worth the cost? In Pacific Palisades, where rebuild permits are being approved more quickly, building contractors are wondering — what exactly is the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s plan?

In both areas, successfully putting power lines underground will require buy-in from neighbors on each block. If there’s one holdout, it can render an entire undergrounding project unfeasible. These individual homeowners could foot up to $10,000 of the bill, though those costs are still being worked out.

After a flurry of calls to put more power lines underground from community members, local officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom himself, the challenges of actually doing it — including whether people can or are willing to pay for it — are mounting.

Why put lines underground?

The causes of both the Eaton and Palisades fires remain under investigation. The leading theory for the Eaton Fire is that a de-energized transmission line (those big power lines up in the mountains) somehow re-energized and sparked the fire.

The electrical transmission towers above Eaton Canyon in Altadena, where the LA wildfire known as the Eaton Fire originally started.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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Transmission lines are generally not buried underground because they’re often high above vegetation, are far apart from each other and are far less likely to spark fires. (Though when they do, it can be devastating — equipment on Pacific Gas & Electric transmission lines were found to be the cause of the deadly Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and razed the town of Paradise in Northern California).

In the Palisades, the leading theory is that a previous fire possibly reignited with the winds.

But in both areas, there’s evidence that downed distribution power lines — the lines that actually connect to our homes — sparked additional fires.

In Altadena, radio traffic shows how downed lines sparked new fires after Edison did not shut off power. In Pacific Palisades, a lawsuit representing more than 3,300 families alleges evidence of DWP downed power poles worsening the fires.

Snapped LADWP power poles and downed lines stand on a hill in the Palisades Fire burn scar. The image is from a lawsuit alleging high winds snapped the poles, leading to additional fires from the downed power lines.

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Screenshot from Grigsby et al. lawsuit against LADWP

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Putting distribution lines underground can almost completely reduce the risk of those lines sparking fires, as well as improve reliability. But it’s a lot more expensive than other fire-risk-reduction strategies, such as covered conductors or “fast trip” technology, which turns off the power automatically when a fault is detected on a line. Those strategies can reduce fire ignition risk by around 55% to 80%, respectively, and sometimes more, according to studies by utilities and academics.

An example of a covered conductor.

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Courtesy Southern California Edison

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Covered conductors like this one can reduce fire risk significantly, though not as much as burying power lines.

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Courtesy Southern California Edison

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But burying power lines also comes with advantages — the lines are insulated from the environment so they need less maintenance, and it can prevent the need to shut off power during dangerous fire weather (though it can extend outages when they happen since the lines are harder to reach).

Edison’s ratepayers largely have to foot the bill for these fire risk reduction strategies — from tree and vegetation management, to hardening infrastructure. It’s a big reason why electricity bills continue to rise — Edison estimates about 10% of our bills go toward wildfire mitigation.

What goes into the average SoCal Edison electric bill.

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Courtesy Southern California Edison

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How SoCal Edison is putting lines underground

In Altadena, about a mile of the trenching and equipment installation needed to put power lines underground has been completed so far along Sunny Oaks Circle and East Loma Alta Drive, just below the foothills. Many, though not all, of the houses in the area burned in the Eaton Fire. The utility was already planning to put these lines underground before the fire — now the work is being expedited.

Edison will need to secure about 30 easements from homeowners to successfully complete the remaining mile-and-a-half or so of this underground segment, said Shinjini Menon, Edison’s vice president of system planning and engineering.

A newly paved street hides buried power infrastructure at Sunny Oaks Circle and East Loma Drive in Altadena. The box to the right is the transformer. Newly built homes will connect to the cables running through it.

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Securing easements and rights of entry from full blocks of homeowners will be key to finishing all the underground projects, she said. Her team is managing the restoration work.

This part of Altadena is in a designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, which experts say is the ideal place to put power lines underground. About 40 miles of underground lines are planned in Altadena's high-risk zones.

“ We are doing this because it makes sense for the communities and we really need their help collectively to get all the easements and permits that we need,” Menon said.

The rest of Edison’s line mileage in the area — about 45 miles — are not in designated high-risk zones. Still, the utility said it plans to bury about 23 miles of those lines "given the amount damage that has happened where there are multiple homes along roads that have to be rebuilt,” Menon said. They're assessing an additional 19 miles for undergrounding in lower fire-risk areas.

Shinjini Menon, SoCal Edison’s vice president of system planning and engineering.

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When it comes to burying power lines, Menon said Edison considers "not only the benefits from the risk reduction from fire, but the long term benefits of, 'Hey, we don't have to trim the trees as much once we are underground. We don't have to inspect as frequently.' There are other benefits that come with it. So looking at the lifecycle view of it and saying, 'Where does it make sense?'”

At the same time, Menon said, the utility is upgrading the system to hold more electricity to deal with higher future demand. She said now is the time to do it, when the cost will be less than normal given the scale of destruction.

Cost worries residents

Edison officials say they have done extensive outreach with officials and community members about their plan to bury power lines, but many residents feel they’re still left in the dark, especially when it comes to how much the work may cost them.

Julian Saucedo and his wife lost their home of 35 years in Altadena. He lived far below the foothills and is still beyond the bounds of newly designated fire-risk areas.

Still, Edison plans to bury the power lines that serve him and his neighbors as soon as the end of this year — and Saucedo’s not happy about it.

“It's been six months and little or nothing from [Edison] in terms of what they're doing in the undergrounding arena,” Saucedo said. “And we are beside ourselves.”

His biggest concern? The cost. In a letter to Newsom in mid-April, Edison Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro wrote it could cost individual homeowners $8,000 to $10,000 to connect to new underground lines, plus fees that may not be waived.

“Finding alternative ways to fund this significant out-of-pocket expense, including through government funds or philanthropic sources, could meaningfully assist customers in their rebuilding efforts,” Pizarro wrote.

Restored overhead power lines in Altadena.

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A spokesperson for Edison told LAist they’re working with L.A. County to secure funding from the state’s office of emergency management, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to offset those costs.

But so far, no word on that additional money. And Saucedo and his neighbors are skeptical that support will ever come through.

Unlike required code upgrades, connecting to underground power lines is not covered by insurance. Saucedo worries the cost could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the difference for some neighbors between deciding to rebuild or leave.

He called the undergrounding effort by Edison “a money grab,” especially in areas that are not designated high fire risk, even if they burned in the Eaton Fire.

“We're quite a group of neighbors — we are all rallying behind each other,” Saucedo said. “A number of individuals are strongly opposed to undergrounding.”

Saucedo and his neighbors are advocating for homeowners to reject Edison’s right of entry and easement sale requests.

Instead, they’re planning to push for other, cheaper fire suppression methods, such as covered conductors or fast-trip sensors.

“We're worried that everyone's just going to sign these ROEs [rights-of-entry] and then we're all footing the bill,” said Nicole Wirth, an Altadena resident who lost her home and is a captain with grassroots group Altagether.  She said they want more transparency about the costs from Edison. ”We don't have a ton of trust in Edison right now, and we don't have a ton of trust that the county is looking out for us.”

An aerial view of properties cleared of fire debris in Altadena.

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Mario Tama

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Getty Images

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Amanda Riddle, lead attorney for the Eaton Fire lawsuit, said her clients could claim that cost as part of their damages.

“The costs shouldn't be on the ratepayers or homeowners at this point,” she said.

Edison has said they will pay homeowners a $500 stipend for the right of entry, plus whatever they’re owed for the sale of an easement.

“Our preference is to reach an agreement with the property owners,” said Edison spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas. “Delays into getting access to work on properties can slow down the collective effort to build back stronger. We are committed to working with the homeowners.”

Meanwhile, finding an accessible way to identify if their individual properties will be in areas with newly buried power lines has been a challenge for homeowners. Members of Altagether have been piecing details together using Edison’s public list of current undergrounding projects, then searching the names of the circuits in Altadena via this map.

In an FAQ Edison released in June, the utility said it is “developing a public ArcGIS map to show planned undergrounding areas.”

Putting the cart before the horse?

Beyond questions about costs, in Pacific Palisades, builders and residents are wondering why the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is taking so long to develop a specific plan.

“ This plan should be done,” said Reza Akef, who was raised in the Palisades and now builds homes there via his company Metro Capital Builders.

Unlike in Altadena, the goal in the Palisades is to bury 100% of the lines in the neighborhood, which exists entirely in a designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

Before the fires, about 48% of the lines in the Palisades were already underground, said Yamen Nanne,  an assistant program management director with LADWP.

Nanne said the city-owned utility is putting together more specific plans that will be released at a town hall Aug. 27.

Part of the delay has been coordinating with telecommunications companies, who jointly own poles with LADWP but will have to foot the bill themselves to go underground with the utility.

“ Initially, we did get some concerns from the telecommunication companies about the costs associated with that,” said David Hanson, senior assistant general manager for LADWP’s power system at a July 2 town hall. “But we have had further meetings with the telecom companies and we're making some accommodations for them. So I feel confident that we're moving forward with both electrical and telecommunication underground.”

Power poles in Pacific Palisades. LADWP has largely restored its overhead system already.

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Burying lines will not be required in the Palisades — it will only happen if each neighborhood block agrees to it together.

“There's no mechanism for us to come in and essentially force folks to go underground,” Hanson said. “We want to provide the option, and if they don't want to take the option, it's fine with us. We'll harden your overhead system with another wildfire mitigation technique.”

Like Edison, DWP is also upgrading how much power the system can handle in the process. They’re doing that by expanding their station on Sunset Boulevard, where power lines are being put underground.

This will be the new “backbone” of the neighborhood’s upgraded electric system, a spokesperson for the utility said, and will allow the utility to abandon a plan for another distribution center near Marquez Elementary School, which had long faced resistance from the community.

The increased voltage LADWP is building into this system is another reason for delays.

LADWP is burying power line on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades.

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“Since this is a new voltage not currently used anywhere else in LADWP service territory, special attention and consideration is being taken to ensure the system will be reliable for the homeowners and safe for our crews and inspectors constructing and operating the system,” said Mia Rose Wong, a spokesperson for the utility.

Hanson said that even without the specific plans yet in public hands, as long as homeowners who are rebuilding install an electrical panel that supports both underground and overhead electric service, they’ll be able to be hooked up to the underground system when LADWP gets to them.

Restored overhead power lines in Pacific Palisades.

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Contractors are skeptical.

“That is so far from the truth  of what it takes to underground power in Los Angeles,” Akef said.

He pointed out that when connecting to underground power, homeowners need to hire an electrical engineer who can provide more detailed plans to the city on their power needs beyond that electrical panel upgrade, such as how many amps are needed and the size and number of the conduit lines. Inspections from LADWP are required every step of the way, Akef said.

He worries that for those already rebuilding, it could cost them later if they get too far ahead of LADWP.

 ”Imagine those people who are building right now,  for example, like if you finish your hardscape or your driveway,  you would have to tear that all down,” Akef said. “You’d have to trench down three feet for this conduit and take it to the property line.”

Justin Skaggs, a utility consultant who specializes in overhead to underground conversion for power lines, said the “logistical puzzle” of burying lines in a timely manner in concert with homes being rebuilt requires more coordination with contractors and homeowners than is currently happening.

“Everyone's going to be on different timelines, so it's very difficult for anyone to be able to really logistically plan,” Skaggs said. “ It's going to be very challenging to coordinate. That's probably one of the biggest hurdles other than the funding.”

May gray skies will continue to keep the mornings on the cooler side, but come later this afternoon we'll see some sunshine and slightly warmer temps.

High temperatures along the beaches will stay in the mid 60s to around 70 degrees, and reach the lower 70s for the inland coast.

For the valleys, temperatures will reach the upper 70s. Meanwhile the Inland Empire will see highs up to 83 degrees.

Coachella Valley will see highs from 95 to 100 degrees.

Looking ahead to the weekend, the National Weather Service is forecasting high surf and dangerous rip currents for nearby beaches.

Come Saturday afternoon around 3:00, Ventura County will be under a high surf advisory. That will last until 9 a.m. Monday. Waves could be five to eight feet tall.

Meanwhile, the Malibu coast and L.A. County beaches will see dangerous rip currents and breaking waves starting Saturday evening through Monday morning. Swimmers, surfers and beach goers should be careful.

Since staunch conservatives achieved full control of Huntington Beach’s seven-member City Council in 2024, they have voted in lockstep to fight state mandates to build more housing, and for the right to censor books in the children’s library. They also voted unanimously to install a commemorative plaque at the library that spells out “M-A-G-A” and to commission a public mural to honor slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

But the city’s once-solid MAGA coalition appears to be fracturing, largely over allegations of “cronyism” — contracts, deals, favors and political appointments that appear to benefit friends and family of the city’s leaders. In April, several members of the council publicly lambasted the mayor’s plan to award a lucrative contract, seemingly out of nowhere and without competitive bidding, to the fiance of his appointee to a city commission.

The public backlash was swift from across the political spectrum — an unusual occurrence in the politically polarized city. An equally unusual display of dissent arose from the once-allied council. One of the dissenters, City Councilmember Chad Williams, told LAist he was outraged by “the audacity of our own mayor to push through this sweetheart deal for his commissioner’s fiance. Our city deserves better,” he said.

The mayor, Casey McKeon, told LAist he didn’t “understand the pushback.” He said the consultant who would have benefited from the contract, Tyler Wolff of Wolffhaus Studio & Creative, “happens to be one of the best in the industry. Why should we not engage in his services?”

Wolff, for his part, told LAist he merely saw problems with the city’s “brand ecosystem” — including events, merchandising and media outreach — and proposed solutions. “There’s no creative leadership, there’s no oversight, and there’s no accountability,” he said. Wolff said he was caught off guard by the controversy over the proposed contract for his company. “I know nothing about the RFP procurement process,” he said.

Ultimately, McKeon withdrew the contract with Wolffhaus under pressure, and the city is currently evaluating alternative bids (including from Wolffhaus).

The rift comes at a fraught time for the MAGA movement: Nationally, the coalition is splintering over the war in Iran; Locally, a deepening budget crisis in Huntington Beach has caused some residents and local leaders to look more closely at the city’s recent spending decisions.

At the heart of the city’s problems is cronyism, critics say. But not everyone agrees on what falls into that category.

The backstory

The latest controversy started when a proposal to award a $720,000 contract to Wolffhaus appeared on the city’s April 7 council meeting agenda, proposed by Mayor McKeon. The two-year contract was for revamping and maximizing the city’s “brand,” including ramping up sales of HB merch, opening a film commission, and improving the city’s public relations. The ultimate goal is to generate more revenue to help close a looming budget gap.

Several council members said they had no prior knowledge of the initiative before it appeared on the agenda — nor did they know that the city had already paid Wolff $30,000 to “audit” the city’s branding and communications strategy.

Critics, including Councilmember Williams, pointed out what they characterized as a number of other red flags, including Wolffhaus’ unfinished website which included a contact number that went to an adult hotline. (Wolff said it was a mistake and is now fixed.) The contract also contained a clause stating that, should the city want to cancel the contract at any time without cause, it would owe half of the remaining allocated funds to Wolffhaus. Williams called it a potential “windfall for work that was never done.”

“This was tailor made for Tyler [Wolff],” Williams said of the contract.

City Councilmember Andrew Gruel sided with Williams in vocally opposing the contract, calling its road to near-approval “sloppy.” Gruel told LAist he has a high regard for Wolff’s work, but was concerned about the transparency leading up to the contract’s sudden appearance on the council’s agenda. “I think the whole process was upside down,” Gruel said.

The council’s usual critics were livid, lambasting the personal connection between McKeon and Wolff and the lack of a competitive bidding process, which is generally required for large contracts.

“The whole thing just smacks of cronyism, backroom deals, sloppiness, lack of accountability, fiscal responsibility, I mean, pick some adjectives,” said Cathey Ryder, co-founder of the group Protect HB. The group has been a frequent foil to the current council’s agenda, including spearheading a ballot initiative last year that overturned the library censorship measure.

But indignation came in equal measure from the other side of the proverbial aisle, including from former backers of the mayor and his allies.

“I’ve supported most of the people on this city council for a long time,” resident Domnic McGee said during public comment at the April 7 meeting. “But it seems that certain people are ruling by fiat,” he said, referring to McKeon.

McGee, who serves on the city’s planning commission, told LAist he worried that the communications contract would give the mayor a direct line to “spin” the messaging coming out of the city during election season. McKeon is up for re-election this fall.

“Casey [McKeon] will be able to override anything he doesn't like and overemphasize what he does,” McGee said. “And he could pretty much use this for his campaign.”

McGee said he campaigned for McKeon in 2021 but would now “never vote for him again.”

Following the outcry, McKeon withdrew the proposal from consideration and the city put out a request for competitive bids. An ad hoc committee made up of the mayor and two allied council members will review the proposals in private and recommend their top choices. Williams said the bidding process had been “utterly tainted.”

A pattern of 'cronyism' complaints

The rift over the Wolffhaus contract may have temporarily shaken up Huntington Beach’s conservative factions, but the faultlines are blurry. At their latest meeting, the city council voted 6-0 to shift $10,000 in federal grants from an afterschool care program in the city’s Oak View neighborhood, and $5,000 from a local program for at-risk youth, to a nonprofit where Councilmember Gruel, a vocal critic of the Wolffhaus deal, is the executive director.

The organization, Save the Brave, which is based in Temecula, takes veterans on deep-sea fishing trips. Gruel left the city council chambers when the vote was taking place, but did not formally recuse himself, or publicly disclose his ties to the organization. Under California’s Political Reform Act, elected officials are required to publicly disclose and recuse themselves from voting on any issue that represents a potential financial conflict of interest.

Gruel told LAist he had disclosed his ties with the organization from the start of the grant process — well before the money came to a vote before city council. He said he takes no money for his work with Save the Brave, and that he didn’t know he was supposed to publicly disclose his ties to the organization at the time the vote took place. “I’m still learning all this stuff,” said Gruel, a chef and TV personality who was appointed to his seat last year after former Councilmember Tony Strickland won a seat in the state legislature in a special election.

Asked whether he thought the council’s vote to give his organization additional funds was a bad look, Gruel said “Of course.”

“Especially in the framework of previous council decisions, there’s this reputation now that there are these backroom deals,” he said.

Longtime critics of Huntington Beach’s city government say it has become commonplace to reward people with political and family ties with funds, contracts, and prominent positions in city government. They point to the following examples:

• A decades-long, multi-million dollar settlement with the operator of the city’s annual airshow, who staged campaign events and printed signs for several of the city councilmembers who approved the settlement. The city has been fighting a state effort to audit the deal. But Williams and Gruel recently proposed settling the case and letting the audit go forward.
• A special street renaming for a local conservative donor, Ed Laird, who helped fund the campaigns of several city council members. (Laird also helped negotiate the airshow settlement.)
• The appointment, by Gracey Van Der Mark, of City Councilmember Gruel’s wife to the city’s Community and Library Services Commission in 2023. Gruel said he had nothing to do with the appointment, which is unpaid.
• The appointment in 2022 of Kelly Gates, wife of Michael Gates, the former city attorney and now deputy assistant attorney, to the city’s Finance Committee, also an unpaid position. Van Der Mark also made that appointment. 

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, the state ethics body, has found legal violations related to some of these incidents. The commission recently ruled that former city attorney Michael Gates, and City Council members McKeon, Van Der Mark, and Pat Burns violated disclosure rules by failing to report that they had received free VIP passes to the airshow in 2022 when they were negotiating a settlement with the event’s operator. A similar complaint is pending against Kelly Gates — city finance commissioners are also required to disclose their income and gifts.

The mere appearance of a conflict of interest is problematic for good governance, said Tracy Westen, a public interest lawyer who has expertise in government ethics. For example, appointing the spouses of government leaders to key positions in city government. “It could be they were the best people for the job,” Westen said, “but it raises an appearance issue.”

Some Orange County cities, including Irvine, Westminster and Laguna Niguel, prohibit appointments of family members to city commissions. Huntington Beach does not have a similar rule, although the city council is prohibited from appointing relatives to salaried positions.

What it all means for the November election

Those looking to unseat the current city council majority see opportunity in the rift over the Wolffhaus contract. “We are pleasantly surprised to see that there's a crack in the cabal, for lack of a better word,” said Ryder of Protect HB. The group is backing a slate of four candidates in the November election in hopes of unseating the council majority. One of the candidates is Erin Spivey, who sued the city over the book censorship policy and won, including a $1 million judgment against the city for attorneys' fees. The city is appealing.

If elected, Spivey said she would propose a ban on contracts and city appointments for individuals with close ties to city councilmembers. “This has got to stop. The government is not the plaything of elected officials,” Spivey said.

Some of the city’s most controversial figures are seeking higher office this year. Michael Gates is running for state Attorney General in the June primary. Van Der Mark is also hoping to make a jump to Sacramento — she’s one of four candidates to represent State Assembly District 72 on the primary ballot.

At the local level, McKeon and Burns are up for re-election this fall, and Gruel will face his first test on a ballot.

McKeon, Burns, and newcomer Brian Thienes are running as a conservative slate, with signs reading “Don’t split the vote!”

But Gruel has chosen to run solo — distancing himself from the trend in Huntington Beach, over the last two election cycles, of Republican-backed council candidates running as a bloc. “I don’t necessarily look at everything through a party filter,” Gruel told LAist, adding that he considers himself a small-government libertarian.

Gruel said he shared critics’ concerns about the lack of daylight on some of the city’s recent contracts and decisions. “Generally speaking this is why I’m so frustrated by the look, because my whole thing is transparency,” he said.

Orange County will stop spraying local flood control channels with toxic chemicals — an environmental issue that has morphed in recent months into a major theme in the June 2 primary race to represent South O.C. on the Board of Supervisors.

In an emailed announcement, Supervisor Katrina Foley, who represents District 5, wrote that “following months of community outcry,” O.C. Public Works would halt spraying and “instead observe the growth patterns of invasive species to evaluate the safest and most effective procedures for removal.”

The backstory

The environmental activists who make up the three-person Creek Team OC began raising the alarm earlier this year about the county’s practice of spraying toxic chemicals to keep vegetation down in local waterways and flood control channels, which flow out to the ocean. Brent Linas, the group’s founder, had become concerned about the issue while noticing what he characterized as “dead” ecosystems during his runs along San Juan Creek, which empties into Doheny State Beach.

The political context

The herbicide spraying had become a major issue in the race to represent District 5 on the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Katrina Foley, a Democrat, is running for reelection against state Assemblymember Diane Dixon, a Republican. The conservative Lincoln Club, through its PAC, has spent around $200,000 thus far to try to influence the race. The PAC has latched onto the herbicide issue to attack Foley in ads and mailers.

The Lincoln Media Foundation, which shares an address and officers with the Lincoln Club, has simultaneously published content critical of Foley’s handling of the herbicide issue through the affiliated publication, California Courier.

Linas of Creek Team called Foley’s announcement about the countywide pause on herbicide spraying “a huge, huge victory for us.” Linas, who described himself to LAist as a lifelong Democrat, said his group ultimately used the political jockeying over the issue to their advantage. “ We took this firehose of money that exists and we redirected some of it towards what we saw as an urgent issue,” he said.

What’s next?

Orange County Public Works could still use herbicides in conjunction with maintenance work if they identify an “immediate need of vegetation management,” according to the announcement. But the county would give the public seven days' notice in advance of any such use. A pilot project along San Juan and Trabuco creeks is underway to evaluate the viability of replacing chemical spraying with manual and mechanical weed removal.

How to watchdog your local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The Orange County Board of Supervisors meets on alternating Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. at 400 W. Civic Center Drive, Santa Ana. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

U.S. domestic air travel has boomed in recent years, except for one segment. Short flights of a few hundred miles decreased over the past decade, while longer flights became more popular, according to data gathered by the aviation analytics firm OAG for NPR.

Nearly 4 million short flights are scheduled for this year. But as of mid-April, the number of flights spanning less than 250 nautical miles had declined by 11% from 2016 to 2026 — the biggest drop of any route length. The decline comes as no surprise to John Grant, a senior analyst at OAG.

"That is an awful distance to be operating," he says, because short flights are more expensive for airlines than flights with a longer cruise time.

In contrast, every domestic flight category of more than 500 miles saw notable gains over the same 10-year span. The numbers depict the U.S. hub-and-spoke aviation system moving toward longer "spokes" for some routes.

The trend was well established even before rising fuel prices from the Iran war rattled U.S. aviation. It could now accelerate, as airlines raise prices and trim less-profitable flights due to jet fuel supply constraints.

Domestic jet fuel costs have roughly doubled since early February, before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on jet fuel in March, a 56% increase from February, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Spirit Airlines blamed the soaring fuel costs when it announced it would shut down last weekend. Prices are even higher for Asia and other markets that rely more heavily on supplies transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

"Any time there is pressure like that, particularly a cost pressure, but also a resource pressure, airlines are going to concentrate flying where they can move the most passengers with the fewest pilots," says Faye Malarkey Black, CEO of the Regional Airline Association.

Short-hop flights are the most frequent, and least efficient

Every day, thousands of U.S. airline passengers step off planes without needing to check the local time and weather, because they've traveled less than 100 miles, on flights lasting less than an hour.

For example, there are dozens of flights between Milwaukee and Chicago each week, even though they're separated by less than 80 miles and have been connected by rail lines for more than a century. But there's a key snag for travelers in the Milwaukee area who might want to take the train to O'Hare International, says Joshua Schank, an urban planning professor at UCLA who's also a partner with the consulting firm Infra Strategies.

"Remember, that rail is going between the [cities'] two downtowns, and it's not between the airports," he says. "And that's the key distinction," he adds, noting that a majority of the route's passengers are likely connecting to other destinations beyond Chicago.

For routes like that to make economic sense, they require enough people willing to pay, says Black, of the airline association.

"It's not the distance, it's the density," she says. "If you have a short flight that has a lot of density because it's between two urban centers and it's a viable option, then people will take that option."

It's one of the shorter spokes in the U.S. hub-and-spoke system that helps airlines concentrate their traffic. That's why the sub-250-mile distance remains the second most popular domestic route, even with its double-digit decline. The most popular flight category over the past 10 years isn't much longer, with the 251 to 500 nautical mile distance scheduled 2.1 million times in 2026, despite a roughly 4% dip.

But all those repeated shorter flights come at a cost.

"A lot of the fuel is used in the takeoff and landing processes," Grant says. And every landing, he notes, adds wear and tear on the planes' equipment.

To hit the sweet spot of revenue versus cost, Grant says, "airlines typically try to be in that two-hour block time" – a category that includes flights over 500 miles, such as Washington, D.C., to Atlanta.

At airports, short flights also add to the workload for understaffed air traffic control systems and congested gates. A small regional jet carrying 50 people, for instance, is just as important to a controller as a wide-body airliner. And it takes up gate space repeatedly, as it shuttles passengers back and forth to a hub airport. As Black notes, the impact of all those short flights adds up.

"Regional airlines have always been the backbone of air service to smaller communities," she says. "In the early 2000s, they were the only source of scheduled air service for roughly three-quarters of U.S. airports. Today, that figure is closer to two-thirds."

Prices for U.S. jet fuel have nearly doubled since before the Iran war began, shaking up the aviation industry. This file photo shows a worker preparing to fuel a United Express jet at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, in Grapevine, Texas.

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Where are we heading? 

Despite their recent decline, short-hop flights are integral to the hub-and-spoke network, taking people from Colorado Springs to Denver, for instance, or from Birmingham to Atlanta.

But airlines have shifted more toward longer flights over the past decade, thanks largely to a new generation of narrow-body aircraft that are more efficient, making them an enticing option for longer-range routes. That's why the trendline favors routes such as the 501 to 750-mile category (e.g. Portland to Las Vegas, or Houston to Tampa), which grew by 11% to nearly 1.7 million scheduled flights in 2026. Flights of more than 750 and 1,000 miles each saw double-digit percentage gains, as well.

"Unfortunately for short-haul routes, the economics are not in their favor," says Ahmed Abdelghani, professor of operations management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. He notes that a smaller jet's higher costs must be borne by fewer passengers than a larger plane, prompting higher fares.

"Those new generation narrowbody aircraft will have much better economics than the smaller 50-seater, 70-seater aircraft," Abdelghani says, citing the newer jets' ability to spread costs over more than 160 seats, depending on how they're configured.

The newer planes align with airlines that prioritize route profitability, Abdelghani says. But he and Black both say that larger narrow-body planes aren't a good fit for every market – and as a result, smaller communities could see fewer flights and connectivity.

"The airports with the sharpest service losses tend to be small hub and non-hub airports," Black says, "and those markets are often built around shorter-distance flying." She notes that other problems, such as pilot shortages, are also affecting small markets. "As pilot availability tightened, airlines had to make decisions about where limited flying could be sustained," Black says.

As Abdelghani puts it, "The airline decides, OK, since now I'm going to fly only efficient aircraft, I'm going to sacrifice the routes that this aircraft doesn't fit."
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