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Grant sought to attract daily service
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Western Reserve Port Authority will learn in the fall whether the U.S. Department of Transportation will approve a $780,000 grant to help the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport continue trying to attract daily air service.
The attention the Mahoning Valley is getting from companies interested in removing oil from the Utica Shale below ground should make it easier to obtain the grant and attract such service, the airport’s director of aviation, Dan Dickten, said.
The airport has secured two Small Community Air Service Development Program grants since 2005, the most recent one having been a $575,000 grant awarded in 2007.
The airport also received one for $250,000 in 2005 that was used to help attract leisure flights to Orlando by Allegiant Air. Allegiant, which now offers flights to three leisure destinations from the local airport, recently marked its sixth anniversary here.
But in February, the DOT revoked the approximately $475,000 left in the 2007 grant, saying the grant was awarded to help attract an airline that would provide daily air service using a 50-seat to 90-seat regional jet.
In reality, the local airport had decided in recent years that its best hope of attracting daily service to an airport such as Dulles International in Washington, D.C., Chicago O’Hare or Detroit International was to seek service from commuter prop-jet aircraft, which generally hold fewer than 50 passengers.
A regional jet would be too expensive to operate to locations as near as Washington, Detroit or Chicago, Dickten said.
“The Department of Transportation encouraged the airport to reapply for 2012,” Dickten said, calling the reason the old grant was removed a “technicality.”
The airport has had fruitful discussions with various airlines regarding daily service to locations such as Washington, Detroit and Chicago, but the airlines appear to be waiting until the Utica Shale play matures, Dicten said.
The same thing happened in areas such as Scranton and Williamsport in Pennsylvania as the Marcellus Shale play developed there.
“The airlines are just waiting to see the need increase,” Dickten said.
As with the earlier grants, the local community would be required to provide matching money of about 35 percent ($420,000) and in-kind contributions of $480,000. In-kind contributions could include things such as advertising and marketing.
And like the grant that was lost this year, one of the purposes of the new grant would be to pay an airline money to keep it operating here for a year in the event that the service was not self- sustaining in the beginning.
Returning daily air service to the community has been identified as “one of the primary economic-development issues that the region must overcome” to improve the local economy, the grant application says.
Oil and gas companies such as BP America, Chesapeake Energy and Carrizo Oil are just getting their drilling operations started but “have already inquired as to if [the local airport] can connect” them to their headquarters in Houston, Oklahoma City and Dallas, the application said.
The airport has been without consistent daily air service since 2002.