"EAS: West Virginia's airports under siege"

Sunday, March 13, 2005
  
Airports under siege
Bush's budget could mean slashed air service in state's smallest airports
By Jennifer Ginsberg
The Charleston (WV) Gazette


Flights at three of West Virginia's eight commercial airports could end if
President Bush's 2006 budget passes in its current form. 

Bush's proposal reduces funding for the Essential Air Service program from
$102 million to $50 million and requires airports and their communities to
contribute a matching amount - ranging from 10 to 50 percent, depending on
how isolated the community is - to receive federal funding. 

Communities won't get the federal money without the match.

The president's budget also eliminates funding for the Small Community Air
Service Development Program. This year, four West Virginia airports received
a total of more than $600,000 in grants for marketing and attracting new air
service from the $20 million program. 

Air service at the Beckley, Lewisburg and Bluefield airports depends on
money from the Essential Air Service program. This year, Beckley and
Bluefield each received about $1 million and Lewisburg received $540,000
from the program.

Beckley and Bluefield would each have to come up with a $258,461 match to
receive the EAS money, according to the nonprofit lobbying group Regional
Aviation Partners. Lewisburg would have to raise $54,057. 

The match amount is determined by how far the EAS airports are from larger
airports. Because Lewisburg is at least 210 miles from the nearest large or
medium hub airport - Raleigh-Durham International in North Carolina - it
falls into the most isolated category and has to contribute only 10 percent
of its federal subsidy. Beckley and Bluefield are less than 210 miles from a
larger airport - Charlotte Douglas International in North Carolina - and
fall into the middle category, which requires them to match 25 percent of
the subsidy.

Bush's plan knocks 17 other communities off of the EAS eligibility list
because they are deemed close enough to another airport with jet service.

Beckley, Bluefield and Lewisburg's airport managers said coming up with the
money would range from very difficult to almost impossible.

"No, it's not obtainable by us," said Randall Earnest, Mercer County Airport
manager. "We won't be able to match that money."

The Bluefield airport's annual budget is about $250,000, he said.

Beckley and Bluefield are working on or applying for major airport
improvement projects and have already asked their local governments to help
foot the bills. 

"We get support from the county commission and local organizations that help
the community," Earnest said. "They can only provide so much support."

Lewisburg's flights are already heavily subsidized by the community, said
airport manager Jerry O'Sullivan. Between April and October, the Greenbrier
County Convention and Visitors Bureau and The Greenbrier resort pay for a
daily Delta jet between the airport and Atlanta. The resort also subsidizes
a US Airways jet flight to and from Philadelphia for those six months,
O'Sullivan said.

Beckley and Bluefield have received EAS money for years. Lewisburg began
receiving the federal money in November to pay for seven weekly roundtrip
flights to Charlotte, N.C., five weekly flights to Washington Dulles and two
weekly flights to Pittsburgh on Air Midwest, which flies for US Airways
Express.
 
"The carriers used to be more willing to absorb losses," O'Sullivan said.
"Based on the issues they've had, they said they were losing money in the
winter and needed to be subsidized."

He admits it would be very difficult for the airport to come up with money
to match federal funds. But keeping the flights is important for the
county's welfare. Most of the flights are for people going to The
Greenbrier, which also is the county's largest employer.

He said he was "sure as hell" the airport would find the matching money
somehow. 

Fourteen U.S. senators, including Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., co-sponsored a
bill in January to repeal the local participation portion of Bush's
proposal.

"I'm working to prevent deep cuts to the EAS program this year, but the Bush
administration's budget contains severe cuts in many areas important to
rural West Virginia and it's just too early to tell which programs will
survive," said Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the Senate's Aviation
Subcommittee.

The subcommittee will soon hold a hearing on the U.S. Department of
Transportation's budget, he said.

The Essential Air Service program began in 1978 to guarantee that small
communities would maintain a minimal level of scheduled air service after
the Airline Deregulation Act passed that same year. Deregulation gave
airlines almost total freedom to determine which cities they wanted to serve
and how much to charge for that service. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation received about $102 million this year
to subsidize airlines to serve about 140 rural communities that otherwise
would not have received any scheduled air service.

Bluefield and Beckley's EAS money pays for two daily flights between those
airports and Washington Dulles and one flight a day to Columbus, Ohio.
Colgan Air operates those flights for US Airways Express.

"I don't see how we would be able to serve without EAS," said President
Michael Colgan. "I'm sure Sens. Byrd and Rockefeller will work on the
issue."

Colgan's contract to serve Bluefield and Beckley expires in July 2006.

Earnest said he thought it was fair to expect the communities to match the
federal money, but the request "might be too expensive." 
 
O'Sullivan said he considered Bush's budget to be breaking a promise with
the Essential Air Service's original meaning.

"EAS was included as a remedy to the negative effects of deregulation and
it's changing the guarantee," he said.

Rockefeller helped create the Small Community Air Service Development
Program that started in 2001. The program awards grant money to airports to
help them improve air service and attract new flights. 

"The idea behind the program is that some airports fall through the cracks
because they are too big or busy to qualify for EAS, but not big enough to
really thrive under current market conditions without some assistance,"
Rockefeller said.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded 40 grants worth a
total of $20 million.

The Beckley and Lewisburg airports are sharing a $300,000 regional marketing
grant. The airport managers believe their project could result in 9,000 new
passengers between the two airports within a year. The Morgantown and
Bridgeport airports are sharing a $327,000 grant to create a marketing
campaign to capture new passengers and lower fares.

Charleston's Yeager Airport received $500,000 from the program in 2002 to
subsidize a Continental Airlines flight to Houston. Parkersburg and
Morgantown each received around $500,000 in 2003 to attract service to a
second hub airport.

Funding the air service development program is imperative for smaller
communities to maintain and improve their air service, said Maurice Parker,
Regional Aviation Partners' executive director. 

"If they don't have the ability to attract new air service and retain
existing air service, they will have absolutely no air service."

Attached Photo:

The Essential Air Service program pays about $2 million a year to Colgan
Air, operating for US Airways Express, to run two daily flights between the
Bluefield and Beckley airports and Washington Dulles and one flight a day to
Columbus, Ohio. Passengers fly on 19-seat Beech 1900 turbo propeller planes
like the one shown above.

The Beckley and Lewisburg airports are sharing a $300,000 regional marketing
grant from the Small Community Air Service Development Program to increase
passenger traffic. The program isn't funded in Bush's 2006 proposed budget.

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