July 21--The scene inside the Santa Fe Municipal Airport's tiny terminal can rapidly shift from bustling to idle in a matter of minutes.
On a recent weekday afternoon, its single corridor is crowded with passengers trying to get around each other. Some people wait in line to secure boarding passes for an outbound flight to Denver. Others, having just stepped off a plane from Phoenix, extend the handles on their rolling luggage and head out the door with cellphones pressed to their ears. Hotel shuttles and rental cars cruise out of the parking lot. A taxi comes in.
Within a few minutes, the sidewalk in front of the adobe building is vacant. Inside, the footfalls from a single airline worker crossing the tile floor are some of the only sounds. Every chair is empty.
At one end of the terminal, the door to the airport manager's office bears a sign that says, "Open. Come in." Airport Director Francey Jesson spins from her computer to sort piles of paperwork on her desk.
Jesson, who oversees a staff of four, says her job as airport director in a place like Santa Fe is to increase overall traffic and promote existing operations.
Operations at the regional airport have been picking up steam in recent years. The number of passengers has increased fourfold since 2008 and is now double the previous high of 44,217 passengers in 2000. There are now nine daily flights on three airlines, allowing passengers to make connections to the rest of the world without driving much farther away than the nearest grocery store.
But planes leaving Santa Fe aren't fully booked. Many people apparently don't believe flying out of Santa Fe is affordable or practical and choose to drive to Albuquerque's bigger hub 60 miles away.
Airport buffs say most area residents aren't tuned in to what's offered to and from Santa Fe. Pilot Richard Allison, for example, suggests the city begin to increase awareness about the local airport with a billboard along Interstate 25.
"There are just too many people who come up to you and say they don't know we have commercial air service," said Allison, a member of the Airport Advisory Committee.
Jesson, who started the job in May, knows small regional airports. She worked for 23 years in various airport management roles, including in Aspen, Colo., and Santa Monica, Calif., before landing here when former airport director Jim Montman retired.
"What we want to work on is to get people to at least try Santa Fe first," she said. "It's not always going to be more expensive; sometimes it is cheaper. And if it's not, if the differential between here and Albuquerque -- once you add in the drive and gas and parking -- works, why not fly out of Santa Fe? We are your local hometown airport."
Small airport hit harder by delays
Passengers can now catch direct flights from Santa Fe to four cities -- Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver and Dallas. That's a big change from 2008, when all the airlines had dropped commercial service from the capital city.
The choices increased May 1, when Great Lakes Airlines began a new daily flight to Phoenix on its small turbo-propeller planes. The same day, United Express started making twice-daily flights to Denver in its regional jets. Great Lakes also resumed its Denver flights in and out of Santa Fe in December, and passengers can catch flights on American Eagle regional jets to Los Angeles and Dallas.
One drawback of using the Santa Fe airport, however, is that when problems with weather or aircraft prompt delays, the limited number of daily flights means airlines can't as easily rebook passengers on the same day.
Data maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that this year's flight cancellation rate for Santa Fe of 1.26 percent is higher than the rate in Albuquerque of 0.61 percent. Albuquerque International Sunport also has many more options for rerouting, since it carries 5.1 million passengers a year, compared to Santa Fe's 101,000.
"All airports experience their share of canceled and delayed flights. It is just one aspect of the business," Jesson said. "I would say that our delays and our cancellations, at first blush, are not excessive."
But weather conditions can have more of an impact here. High temperatures affect acceptable weight limits on long flights out of Santa Fe. During May and June, Jesson said, a number of passengers were bumped from American Eagle planes headed to Los Angeles and Dallas/Fort Worth because of low air density at the airport.
"The air is already thin up here on any given day, but on unusually hot days, it is even thinner. Thinner air means an aircraft will accelerate slower to get the speed needed to take off," she explained. "By reducing take-off weight -- passengers, luggage, fuel -- the aircraft can take off safely in the same distance it usually does on cooler days." In anticipation of such conditions in the future, the airline holds back a few seats on midday flights, she said.
In other instances, it's less clear why flights from Santa Fe are canceled, or who or what is to blame. On June 30, for example, United Express -- a subsidiary of United Airlines operated in Santa Fe by ExpressJet -- called off a flight to Denver about 12 hours before its intended Sunday afternoon departure. Ground personnel told passengers who didn't get an email notice in time, and who showed up at the airport anyway, that the cancellation was due to a crew shortage. Many passengers ended up taking a shuttle or driving to Albuquerque to head for their final destination, while others stayed overnight in Santa Fe to try again the next day.
ExpressJet spokeswoman Allison Curtin declined to provide The New Mexican with recent data about the number of canceled flights for Santa Fe service. She said the problem with the June 30 flight was "weather challenges, which are outside our control."
"When multiple weather events impact the largest hubs in our network, as was the case [June 30], it results in flight cancellations and displaced crews throughout our system," she wrote in an email. "The overall reliability of our flights would not be representative of these specific circumstances." Curtin declined to be interviewed or to provide another source from the airline to discuss reliability.
Youngsook Kangcqwas among visitors detained because of the June 30 problem. Although she found the Santa Fe airport "artistic" and "lovely" when she arrived a week earlier to visit Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, her experience with the return flight was less than palatable. When she arrived at the airport, the flight had already been canceled, but an information board still read "on time." She ended up spending the night with friends in Santa Fe and took a flight to Denver the next day.
"That was a little disappointing," Kang said. "I'm not sure if this is the airport or the airline. I felt there was a lack of information, and there was no accuracy in terms of communicating the status of flights. It was confusing, unclear and definitely inconvenient."
Kang, an ordained United Methodist minister who works in Denver, said she is likely to come to New Mexico again, but not necessarily to the Santa Fe airport.
"Now, I know that is a small airport and not too many flights, and you are so limited in options. It will make me think twice," she said. "But I like it -- it is really cute and small, and everything you need is right there."
Viable options depends on cost, convenience
Federal budget scuffles have also affected the small airport in ways that the larger Sunport has not experienced. The city of Santa Fe owns the airport and collects revenue from commercial carriers and private users, but the airport's air-traffic controllers are funded by the Federal Aviation Administration. Funding cuts known as budget sequestration led to the announcement in February that the Santa Fe airport was on the FAA's hit list with more than 148 other facilities that would lose contracts for tower staff.
Officials have moved the estimated date the cuts would take effect several times, most recently announcing in April that money would remain in place through mid-September. Santa Fe joined the American Association of Airport Executives and the U.S. Contract Tower Association in its U.S. District Court lawsuit challenging the plan.
Jesson said last week that she believes the worst of the crisis has passed and that Congress got a clear message about its intentions to slash regional airport money. "I don't think we need to worry," she told the Airport Advisory Committee. "The towers will stay operating."
Some passengers who choose Santa Fe over Albuquerque for air travel say the decision has been easier in recent years. For example, St. Louis resident Tammy Chamberlain has flown to New Mexico about six times in the last decade to attend a family gathering in Red River. Last year, she flew into Santa Fe for the first time.
"We checked flights into Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and Santa Fe had better connections for us, so that is where we went," she said. "It's definitely a viable option for going to the region."
Being able to meet up with other family members who fly here from other places is part of what drives the decision, she said, but she also noted that she prefers smaller airports because lines are shorter.
"I see the advantage when you go out," Chamberlain said. "There is not as much hassle going through security at a smaller airport."
Santa Fe also boasts a long-term parking lot that is within feet of the terminal's front door, along with a readily accessible rental car operation by Hertz that doesn't require any shuttling. Jesson notes that like most other sites in Santa Fe, it's not more than a 15-minute drive from anywhere else in the city. (Fair warning: Just because the airport is small and in the Land of Manana doesn't mean passengers can arrive at the last minute. Airlines still expect you to arrive 90 minutes before the scheduled departure time.)
Price is also a factor in choosing a Santa Fe flight instead of an Albuquerque flight. Passengers might be interested to know that for most flights to Denver and Phoenix, the smaller airport is competitive or even a few dollars cheaper than flying from Albuquerque.
A recent online inquiry showed US Airways and Southwest Airlines offering $200 round-trip tickets to Phoenix, compared with $185 for the Great Lakes flight from Santa Fe. Getting to Denver on United costs $225 from Santa Fe, compared with $229 from Albuquerque. Flights to Dallas/Fort Worth and Los Angeles, on the other hand, are between $30 and $100 more expensive from Santa Fe than from Albuquerque, depending on the airline. The American flight from Santa Fe to Dallas/Fort Worth costs $363, while the US Airways flight from Albuquerque is $330.
Whether airlines allow the Santa Fe Municipal Airport to increase its market share will also depend partly on growth of the facility itself. Currently, office and counterspace in the 1950's-era terminal is at a premium, and only one gate is available for commercial flights. Jesson said federal rules require the airport to make accommodations for airlines that want to provide service, but airlines make choices about adding destinations based on their own business models.
The airport budget -- operated as one of the city's "enterprise funds" -- doesn't have built-in marketing money. Jesson is hoping this summer to get advertising help from the city's Economic Development Division or through lodgers tax revenue already earmarked for marketing to tourists.
"Aviation is growing nationally," she said, "and it's going to grow here if we want it to."
Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @julieanngrimm.
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