43
Port authority approves $420,000 to attract daily air service
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
The Western Reserve Port Authority approved using $420,000 of its hotel-motel bed-tax dollars to help attract daily air service to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
Board members voted 8-0 Wednesday to authorize the money as the matching portion of a $780,000 Federal Aviation Administration grant approved in 2012 to provide a revenue guarantee to an airline that would start up the service.
Dan Dickten, director of aviation at the airport, said airport officials are “smiling but not high-fiving” over the possibility that United Airlines will use the revenue guarantee to start up service here two flights per day, seven days per week.
Airport officials met March 10 in Chicago with United regarding the possibility that United subsidiary United Express might be interested in operating a service between the local airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
Such a service would connect local fliers to a wide range of connecting flights around the world.
Port authority officials and the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber have begun a survey of local businesses and individuals to provide United with information to gauge interest in such a service and hope to present the results to the airline in the coming weeks, Dickten said.
Dickten said the revenue guarantee the airport now can offer most likely would last as much as two years. It would need to guarantee United a profit of at least 5 percent.
Thomas Reich, the airport’s consultant, said in February that loss of the United/Continental hub at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport this June would present an opportunity for the local airport to get daily service.
The FAA awarded the airport a $780,000 Small Communities Air Service grant in 2012. Its purpose is to provide an airline a revenue guarantee that would be used by the airline during its startup phase to guarantee that it can continue the service until it becomes profitable.
YNGAir Partners, a volunteer community group with 42 members, formed a couple of years ago to help acquire the $420,000 matching money. Its president, Denny Gartland, said last month the group has contacted foundations and grown in membership in an effort to be ready when the time comes to seek actual donations.
Though the airport offers flights to four leisure destinations in Florida and Myrtle Beach, S.C., through Allegiant Air, the airport has not had daily service since 2002. United last flew out of Youngstown in 1999.
Such service is important for the economic development of the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, Dickten said.
The Mahoning County commissioners approved a 2 percent increase in that county’s bed tax in August 2012, providing the airport with about $500,000 per year in additional revenue, to be used to operate the airport and fund its economic-development office.
At the time, the bed taxes from Mahoning and Trumbull counties were providing the airport with about $850,000 annually.
Bed taxes are paid by customers staying in hotels and motels in the two counties.