Horizon Air ‘Can’t Say’ When Flights Will Return to Pangborn Memorial Airport

Oct. 14—WENATCHEE — When will Pangborn Memorial Airport see more commercial flights?

"The reality is, we just can't say," said Joe Sprague, Horizon Air president, on Friday.

He and several other Horizon and Alaska Airlines representatives met with area officials at the Confluence Technology Center in Wenatchee to explain why Horizon cut service to one flight a day to and from Seattle earlier this year and what the airline is doing to restore service. The representatives also visited Yakima and Walla Walla, which also now have one Horizon flight a day.

The main reasons for the cut services were a big pilot shortage and the recent COVID-19 restrictions, he said.

Horizon has about 700 pilots now, according to Ray Lane, Horizon and Alaska spokesperson. No real answer was given on how many pilots it would need to add more service to Wenatchee.

When the pandemic caused financial issues for major airlines, Sprague said early retirement packages were offered to pilots to help address airlines' losses. He added a pilot shortage was looming before the pandemic because the Federal Aviation Administration mandates pilots retire at 65, and many reached that age.

"In 2020, there were 10,000 pilots that took early retirements from the big airlines," he said.

He said air travel "came back pretty quickly in the late spring and early summer of last year... So they (big airlines) went into last fall, about a year ago, a hiring spree, the likes of which the industry had never seen before."

He said 80% of all the latest hires at major airlines were from regional airlines, like Horizon Air and Alaska Airlines.

"We had 800 pilots at Horizon a year ago," he said. "We have lost 408 pilots just in the last 12 months."

He said Horizon wasn't down 50% because it hired more pilots, but the numbers lost were "staggering."

"In the first quarter of this year, we were literally losing at least one pilot every single day," he said.

The issue wasn't solely Horizon's, he said. Some communities lost all commercial airline service, he said, because other airlines also cut service.

To get more pilots, he said Horizon began enticing pilots and has "several hundred pilots" in different programs.

The airline partnered with colleges like Walla Walla University and Central Washington University in a Pilot Development Program. Student pilots, if accepted into Horizon's program, get a "fairly healthy stipend to offset their training costs in exchange for them making a two-year commitment to come fly for Horizon."

Horizon and Alaska also began their Ascend Pilot Academy in March, he said, in partnership with Hillsboro Aero Academy, outside of Portland, Oregon. Horizon offers a stipend for students' commercial pilot licenses up to $26,463 on completion of instrument rating, as well as student loan options in exchange for a two-year commitment to work for the airline.

Sprague added the academy could provide all of the airline's needed pilots in four or five years. As of Friday, about 100 were at the academy.

It takes time to become a pilot, he added. "To become qualified as a first officer at a commercial airline, the training process and 1,500 hours experience requirement take approximately two and a half years to obtain," Lane wrote. "This would include the roughly two years of training prior to Horizon and then three months in the Horizon training program."

To help keep pilots at Horizon, Sprague said the airline last month made a deal with union Airline Professionals Association, Teamsters Local 1224, last month. The contract includes increasing pilots' pay by an average of 74% for captains and 85% for first officers, according to the union's website.

In the midst of the pilot shortage, in March, Horizon announced plans to retire its Bombardier Q400 turboprops — the only plane it flies in and out of Pangborn — by the end of 2023. It later said it would make the switch to Embraer 175 jets in January 2023. The switch will create a sort of plane shortage for a brief time, Sprague said, but shouldn't cause more cuts to service.

The jets will be more efficient, he said, because the airline won't have to train people on or maintain two types of airplanes.

However, in summer 2021, Horizon had 62 airplanes, Sprague said. In a year, it will have just 41 planes. The airline is adding 20 more jets in the next four years, he said, bringing the total to 50 jets in 2026.

"Next year, we're hopefully going to fly the heck out of the airplanes we have... So you can get a sense there that this is going to look very different for the next couple of years," he said.

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