Airports on the Hunt for More Destinations

Feb. 10—The coronavirus pandemic has hampered but not stopped the efforts of the region's two commercial passenger airports to add new routes.

The Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport wants direct flights to Denver and Boise while the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport is seeking nonstop service to Seattle or another West Coast destination, as well as Boise.

Currently, Pullman has two daily round-trip, nonstop flights to Seattle, and Lewiston has two or three round-trip, direct flights a day to Salt Lake City depending on the day of the week.

Passenger volume in Pullman is about half of what it was before the pandemic, while Lewiston saw a 72 percent decline last year, according to directors of the airports.

How soon those figures will return to more normal levels depends on a variety of factors, such as how much business travel has been permanently replaced by online meetings, said Tony Bean, executive director of the Pullman airport.

"The recovery is very, very slow," he said. "Aviation is going to be a lagging indicator."

Those challenges, however, haven't prevented officials at both airports from trying to expand options for travelers by continuing discussions with airlines that might be interested in adding flights in north central Idaho and southeastern Washington.

Last July, the Pullman airport won a $780,000 Small Community Air Service Development grant to encourage United or a carrier affiliated with United to introduce Denver flights, Bean said.

Before COVID-19 struck, the Pullman airport had raised an additional $300,000 from businesses and economic development groups to be used with the federal money as revenue guarantees for Denver service, Bean said.

The airport has four years to spend the money and wants to be careful about the timing of any expansion, he said.

If the flights were introduced before the airline industry had started a recovery, the revenue guarantees might be exhausted before the new service was self-sufficient, Bean said.

"There's no hurry," he said. "We want the right fit. We don't want to be in a rush. We want successful service ultimately."

Pullman targeted Denver after careful analysis, choosing it for a number of reasons, including that it has connections to 32 destinations Seattle doesn't, Bean said.

" Denver is a bigger hub than Seattle and Salt Lake City," he said. "It just has different opportunities that we would like to be able to (offer) the traveling public."

Pullman's plans to get Boise service were recently bolstered by a study completed by Mead & Hunt for the Idaho Legislature's interim Intrastate Air Services Committee.

The study found that Pullman- Boise flights had the highest chance of being profitable of all the potential routes it examined if round-trip total fares were somewhere between about $230 and $280, counting estimated fees and taxes.

The committee has been disbanded, but the study is scheduled to be discussed at 8 a.m. PST Thursday at the Jackson Jet Center in Boise in a meeting arranged by Sen. Dan Johnson, R- Lewiston, a committee co-chair.

Johnson has ideas about creating an air travel enhancement fund administered by the Idaho Transportation Department's Division of Aeronautics.

Lewiston is working on the same kinds of strategies as Pullman.

The Lewiston airport is applying for the same kind of grant Pullman won to restore the flights it had to Seattle before Alaska Airlines subsidiary Horizon Air withdrew two years ago, which also ended Lewiston-to- Boise flights.

The transportation hub is requesting $750,000 it would use as a minimum revenue guarantee to a commercial airline that added service, Lewiston Airport Director Mike Isaacs said in an email.

Even though recruiting air service is tough in the present environment, Bean said he views it as one of the most important parts of his job because it improves the quality of life in the region.

"It brings some competition into the market and it gives the public more choice," he said. "I think for any community, that's the biggest thing we want."

Williams may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 848-2261.

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