Tijuana International Airport serves Japan, China and other foreign destinations that San Diegans can’t reach non-stop from Lindbergh Field.

Each year, 475,000 San Diegans catch a flight from the border-hugging Tijuana International Airport. A new study shows that if direct access into the airport is opened from the U.S. side of the border an additional 629,000 passengers would make the trip each year by 2030, generating a direct annual economic impact of $22 million to $67 million and an indirect impact of $82 million to $231 million.

Next month, the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board will take up the results of that study — which looked exclusively at market demand — and consider what step, if any, should come next. While Tijuana’s airport has room to grow, the marketing study showed most of a cross-border terminal’s benefit to be economic with little future congestion relief for Lindbergh Field.

“When you cut through to the bottom line, certainly (a cross-border terminal) has an economic impact, a positive economic impact to that area,“ says Angela Shafer-Payne, the authority’s vice president of strategic planning.

On its face, the 629,000 passengers the project would attract by 2030 sounds significant. Yet it is just a fraction of the 18.3 million who will use Lindbergh Field this year (Tijuana handled 3.8 million in 2006) and does little to relieve the future pressure of a roughly 24 million capacity limit, a mark that will be surpassed by 2030 when the airfield hits 27 million to 32 million passengers. The study also showed the new terminal would not spur expansion of flights into other Asian destinations from Tijuana, aside from existing service to Japan and China.

Tijuana’s International Airport sits just below the border. Brown Field is to the north.

With contributions and direct participation from airport officials on both sides of the border, this latest study quizzed nearly 2,000 people and four focus groups about border terminal options. One was a new airport-exclusive border crossing where travelers would park on the U.S. side and then cross customs directly into Tijuana International. The second places terminals on the U.S. side of the border, so jets would taxi up and passengers would depart without going through customs. Neither option includes project cost estimates and the property along the border is not owned by San Diego’s airport authority.

Shafer-Payne says the airport authority board’s options include looking at South County officials to take the lead on advancing the project. Questions to be answered, she says, include who should take ownership of the idea and move it forward, including refining the concepts.

— Tim McClain