"Airport may be set for economic takeoff"

Airport may be set for economic takeoff

New airline, other factors indicate steady growth

PHILIP A. DWYER THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

Workers at Bellingham International Airport prepare for the departure of a Horizon Airlines shuttle flight to Seattle on Tuesday afternoon.

BY JOHN STARK
THE BELLINGHAM (WA) HERALD

About 10 years ago, Bellingham International Airport and Bishop International Airport in Flint, Mich., were in the same league, serving about 250,000 passengers per year.

Today, Bellingham is still in that league. Flint’s airport is moving into the big time, with regular commercial service from six airlines and more than 1 million passengers served last year.

Flint is just one of a number of smaller airports around the nation experiencing dramatic growth by siphoning off passengers who don’t want to deal with the traffic, parking hassles and long lines inside the terminals of major airports.

Another example is Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio, which has tripled the number of passengers it serves in the past 10 years to top 1.4 million. Manchester, N.H.’s airport has quadrupled its passenger totals in 10 years to reach 4 million.

Could Bellingham be poised to make the same kind of leap? To anyone who remembers squeezing into a twin-engine San Juan Airlines plane and looking over the shoulder of a pilot wrestling with blustery headwinds over a choppy Bellingham Bay en route to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, it sounds incredible.

But it could happen.

FIRST STEPS

Art Choat, the Port of Bellingham’s aviation director, has spent years trying to persuade airlines of Bellingham’s potential as something more than a commuter airport that feeds local passengers into Sea-Tac on small aircraft. Bellingham International Airport, he notes, is a 60-minute drive for 1 million people.

The first breakthrough came in 2004, when Allegiant Air began Bellingham-Las Vegas flights with 162-passenger jets.

Allegiant soon was running near capacity by luring customers from lower British Columbia.

Industry giant Delta Air Lines eventually took notice. Last month, Delta announced Delta Connection service direct from Bellingham to the airline’s Salt Lake City hub, with connecting service to 100 other destinations in North America.

Industry experts say this could be the start of something big for Bellingham.

“I think there’s a tremendous amount of potential in a market like Bellingham,” said Tim Sieber, vice president of The Boyd Group aviation consultants. “You’re probably on the cusp of something fairly substantial.”

Airlines are pushing into outlying airports like Bellingham because their operating costs for renting terminal space are far less than in major hubs, and there is less risk of congestion-related flight delays that cost them money. At the same time, passengers are often willing to pay extra for the convenience of a smaller airport.

“You might see your flights double in the next two or three years,” Sieber said. “If Delta is very successful, United is not going to sit back and let Delta take all the fruit. … These are the kind of markets that airlines are looking for.”

Another commercial aviation consultant, Robert Mann, said the push into smaller airports began about 20 years ago when manufacturers rolled out a new generation of smaller long-range jets. Those allowed airlines to offer longer flights out of smaller markets without committing to the cost of adding bigger planes to their fleets.

When Delta starts service here in June, it will use that type of plane: the 50-seat CJR-200 operated by Sky West Airlines.

Noelle Ware of Burlington leaves the newly remodeled baggage-claim area after arriving at the Bellingham International Airport on Tuesday. PHILIP A. DWYER THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

LOW-COST AIRLINE IS KEY

But Delta alone is not going to push Bellingham into the same class as Flint or Akron-Canton. For that to happen, Bellingham would need to attract a high-volume, low cost carrier. For both Flint and Akron-Canton, that carrier was AirTran Airways. Industry experts credit AirTran with the explosive growth in both places.

“You need a low-cost carrier,” said Richard Butler, who tracks aviation economics as a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio. “The secret of Flint is AirTran.”

Carriers such as AirTran, Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue are on the lookout for lower-cost airports that can attract new passengers into their systems, and Bellingham could be such a place, Butler said. If Delta makes a go of it here, the low-cost carriers are going to notice.

“If Delta is successful, you might start to get some looks from some of these other folks,” Butler said. “If they get people on their planes, it has a demonstration effect.”

Kristie Van Auken, director of marketing and communications at Akron-Canton, agreed that the addition of AirTran low-fare service in 1996 provided the main stimulus for her airport’s growth.

Without a low-cost carrier in the market, other airlines at a small-to-midsized airport will focus on last-minute business travelers pressed for time and willing to pay a premium to avoid delays getting in and out of big-city airports, Van Auken said. That keeps the number of passengers relatively small until a low-cost carrier like AirTran muscles in on the action.

“They came into the market and they changed the game,” Van Auken said.

EXPANSION POSSIBLE

At Bellingham International, Art Choat knows there’s no guarantee any of this will happen here. For one thing, Bellingham’s terminal will be out of space once Delta arrives, even after completion of $2 million in expansion projects earlier this year.

“Delta’s taken the last ticket counters we have left,” Choat said. “Our physical plant, with Delta here, is maxed. … Beyond Delta will require us to make infrastructure improvements at the airport.”

That could mean millions more in capacity additions inside and outside the terminal, although the airport might be able to serve additional airlines in portable structures while new projects get under way.

The good news, Choat said, is that the Federal Aviation Administration pays 90 percent of costs for most airport expansion work, while added parking lots pay for themselves with parking revenue. The port can raise the rest of the money via its $4.50-per-passenger facilities charges.

But that’s also the bad news, because the acceptance of FAA money means the airport is required by federal law to serve any carriers that want to come here. If local residents decide the airport is growing too big too fast, there isn’t much local officials can do about it.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS

An expanded airport is more than a convenience for travelers. It is also an economic stimulus.

Akron-Canton Airport has poured $70 million into growth-related improvement projects in the past five years, Van Auken said.

“That’s a lot of jobs and a lot of momentum and a lot of stimulation for the local economy,” she said.

It doesn’t stop there. An airport with a wider array of destination options helps attract new businesses and keep old ones, economist Butler said.

In Flint, the business community looks to the airport as a welcome engine of job creation in a region that has seen more than its share of economic troubles because of its heavy reliance on the auto industry.

“We are really looking for Bishop Airport to continue its growth and keep doing wonderful things for the economy here,” said Julie Hinterman, director-coordinator of the Genesee County Metropolitan Planning Commission

Busiest airports
These statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation measure airport passenger traffic in terms of "enplanements," or outbound passengers only. The total airline passenger traffic at an airport, including both outbound and arriving passengers, is close to double the "enplanement" numbers. Departure numbers are in millions.
2005 rank	Airport name	2005 departures	2004 rank	2004 departures	Pct. change
1.	Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta	41.596	1	40.367	3.0
2.	Chicago-O'Hare	34.529	2	33.862	2.0
3.	Dallas-Fort Worth	27.746	3	27.787	-0.1
4.	Los Angeles International	22.939	4	22.859	0.4
5.	Las Vegas McCarran	20.771	6	19.416	6.7
6.	Denver	20.484	5	20.104	1.9
7.	Phoenix Sky Harbor	20.110	7	19.158	5.0
8.	Houston Bush International	18.409	10	16.749	9.9
9.	Minneapolis-St. Paul	17.910	8	17.366	3.1
10.	Detroit Metro	17.392	9	16.892	3.0
Top carriers
These statistics measure total passenger traffic, in millions.
2005 rank	Carrier	2005 passengers	2004 rank	2004 passengers	Pct. change
1.	American	98.096	1	91.610	7.1
2.	Southwest	88.436	3	81.121	9.0
3.	Delta	86.090	2	86.891	-0.9
4.	United	66.765	4	70.822	-5.7
5.	Northwest	56.514	5	55.410	2.0
6.	Continental	42.806	7	40.732	5.1
7.	US Airways	41.869	6	42.408	-1.3
8.	America West	22.130	8	21.132	4.7
9.	American Eagle	17.534	10	14.869	17.9
10.	Alaska	16.758	9	16.294	2.9
Total air travel on U.S. carriers

Traffic	2004	2005	Pct. change
Passengers (in millions)	712.6	745.7	4.6
Flights (in thousands)	10.9	11.0	1.0
Revenue passenger miles (in billions)	745.3	788.0	5.7
Available seats-miles (in billions)	987.9	1016.4	2.9
Load factor	75.4	77.5	2.1
Flight stage length*	664	678	2.1
Passenger trip length**	1,046	1,057	1.0
* Average non-stop distance flown per departure (in miles). ** Average distance flown per passenger (in miles). Source: U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics