Airport director departing for S. Calif.

The current director was hired from the service provider Winner Aviation.

By Ed Runyan

VIENNA — Steve Bowser, director of aviation at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport since 2003, leaves in early August to begin work as second in command at the Palm Springs International Airport in Southern California.

Bowser, a Hubbard native, has worked in the aviation industry much of his life, including 16 years at the regional airport.

Bowser said the opportunity to work in a much larger airport and live in Southern California is a “great personal opportunity for myself and my family.”

John Masternick, chairman of the Western Reserve Port Authority, which runs the airport, said he was surprised by the news last week that Bowser was leaving.

“It’s a surprise when anyone leaves a good-paying job right now,” Masternick said. Bowser was due to earn $54,764 this year.

Masternick said the port authority board will assign the task of finding a replacement for Bowser to its personnel committee when the full port authority board meets Wednesday.

Masternick said he has not decided whether it makes sense to hire a search company to find Bowser’s replacement or whether the port authority should handle the job internally.

He noted, however, that before Bowser was hired away from Winner Aviation, which sells fuel and other aviation services at the airport, the port authority advertised the position in trade magazines and received 200 r sum s.

Bowser and the port authority were successful in 2005 in attracting the leisure airline Allegiant to the airport, which provided enough passenger traffic through the facility in 2006, 2007 and 2008 so that it qualified for $1 million annually in Federal Aviation Administration airport improvements funding.

The airport, however, has been unable to find an airline to use a $575,000 U.S. Department of Transportation Small Community Air Service Development Program grant the facility received in October 2007, which was supposed to be used to lure a regional airline to the airport.

Such an airline would provide multiple flights per day to a major hub airport such as Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Columbus or Cincinnati so that passengers could travel anywhere in the world from the local airport.

The last time the airport had such a service was 2002, when Northwest Airlines flew from the facility. Bowser became airport director several months after Northwest left.

Masternick said Bowser has been a hard worker during his time as director.

Bowser, who leaves the job near the end of this month, said it’s important to the Mahoning Valley that the airport continue to work toward attracting another airline in order to help with the growth of area industry and to help “strengthen the position” of the U.S. Air base at the airport.

Bowser was operations manager for Winner Aviation between 1998 and 2002 and worked for Beckett Aviation, another service provider at the airport, between 1992 and 1998.

The Palm Springs airport is about the size of the Akron-Canton Regional Airport, with about a dozen commercial airlines using it regularly, Bowser said.

runyan@vindy.com