Airport reducing costs in response to reduced Allegiant flights

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

VIENNA

The Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport is experiencing a downturn in revenue, mostly because of changes in flights being offered by Allegiant Air.

Allegiant has experienced steady growth at the airport since it began offering flights to leisure destinations in 2006. But the airline shut down flights to Fort Myers/Punta Gorda in August with no clear date for them to return and that has impacted revenue, Dan Dickten, aviation director for the airport, said.

And Allegiant’s decision to add flights in Pittsburgh and Akron also have cut into the airport’s customer base, said Dickten.

The airport expects to have about 110,000 passengers in 2016, about 20,000 fewer than last year.

One of the biggest revenue losses has been in parking – which is expected to drop from $400,000 to about $315,000 this year, Dickten said. Some costs also have increased, such as electricity.

At a meeting of the aviation committee of the Western Reserve Port Authority on Tuesday, Dickten described some of the ways he has cut costs to offset the revenue losses.

The port authority runs the airport.

One reduction is that Jack Sullivan, project coordinator, is working fewer hours, he said. There also has been a reduction of 1.5 full-time equivalent employees in maintenance.

In other business, the committee discussed the effort to turn over a 24,000-square-foot building on the western edge of the airport owned by the port authority to the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

Col. James Dignan, commander of YARS until Friday, provided the committee with a letter he wrote to the Air Force Reserve command in Washington, D.C., that was signed by Ohio’s U.S. senators and local members of Congress.

Dignan is leaving for a part-time staff position at the Pentagon. Col. Darryl Markowski, vice commander of the 910th and YARS, will be interim commander until a full-time replacement is named.

The letter explains that the building has a cargo apron large enough to hold three 747s or the Air Force’s largest aircraft, a C5 Galaxy.

The letter explains that the port authority and other local officials have taken steps to provide the approximately $1 million facility “at no additional cost to the Air Force Reserve.”

Plans for the facility are that it be used as facility from which troops and cargo can be deployed or brought back from a mission.

“The Ohio and Pennsylvania National Guard, as well as the Army Reserve, have also expressed an interest in using this facility,” the letter says.