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As reported in the March 31 edition of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, the executive director of the Williamsport Regional Airport, Richard Howell, appeared last week before the hapless county commissioners and left them "visibly upset" upon learning why, for years now, no airline has been interested in becoming the airport's carrier.
The report of this meeting made it sound as if this were the first time the Commissioners had become aware of a problem that has festered long before 2020 and the pandemic. What they had apparently just now discovered is that airlines aren't interested in serving our community because the airport hasn't received federal Essential Air Service (EAS) funding since 2012. That's when US Airways, after failing to submit the lowest cost proposal for carrier rights, withdrew its bid, declined to continue with the federal subsidy, and chose instead to eat the cost of continuing to do business here. For Mr. Howell and the members of his authority overseeing airport operations, that should have been a huge red light. How long did airport leadership think non-subsidized air service would last?
This tenuous situation was apparently fine with the powers that be until 2020, when Congress attached a rider to the FAA Reauthorization Act stating that any community airport not drawing funds from the EAS coffers in fiscal 2011 would be dropped from the program! Williamsport's air hub was tossed from the program because USAirways was not using EAS funds, a fact known to the authority for years.
It is the chronology of events that should cause heads to spin. The Regional Airport Authority has known for 11 years now that EAS funding was gone, and, in my opinion, made no discernible attempt to remediate the situation. Mysteriously, a brand new airport and millions of tax dollars later, not a single airline was interested in doing business with us! Never mentioned in all of this handwringing was the real cause of that disinterest --the disappearance of the federal subsidy years before.
In the paper's report of this meeting, and in a subsequent Sun-Gazette editorial column by Mr. Frank Pellegrino, chairman of the Airport Authority, a full-court press is now on to "reach out" to elected representatives Meuser, Thompson, Casey and Fetterman, -- "our champions," according to Pellegrino -- to encourage them to support the inclusion of Williamsport in the upcoming FAA Reauthorization bill.
One can only wonder where we would be if, at the moment of impending disaster a decade ago, a campaign had been launched to restore our airport to the EAS program, or compelled USAirways to return to the program as a condition of doing business here. For an airport the quality and cost of ours to be sitting idle for this duration is an indictment of all in charge . . . for not providing answers and not asking questions. With just a modicum of transparency, this problem might have been alleviated long ago. Obsessing over whatever skullduggery may have taken place in Washington years ago with regard to the withdrawn US Airway bid is a convenient smokescreen.
The tangible issue has been the lack of knowledge, courage or honesty at the local level, and the will to get out ahead of an awaiting calamity.
STEPHEN HUDDY
Williamsport
Submitted by Virtual Newsroom