PLATTSBURGH — Customs operations at Plattsburgh International Airport are paused for the last quarter of the federal Fiscal Year 2020, which runs from July through September.

“We haven’t walked away from the program," Airport Director Chris Kreig told The Press-Republican. "They’re on a pause right now until the end of the fiscal year by mutual agreement between us and Clinton County and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“We expect that they are going to resume operations in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2021.”

USER FEE FACILITY

Plattsburgh International Airport was previously considered a landing rights airport, at which aircraft coming from a foreign location required permission from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to land.

That meant that, most of the time, landing such flights could not be supported by airport operations.

The airport has since met the criteria and undergone the application process to enter CBP’s user fee facility program, which culminated in the installation of the airport’s commercial customs facility as well as last fall’s opening of the U.S. Customs Inspection Station for general aviation aircraft, Kreig explained.

User fee airports, for a fee, have on-site customs officers who can process flights coming from a foreign country.

“Those customs officers are assigned to the airport, their duty location is the airport,” Kreig said.

INCREASED NUMBER

Over the federal Fiscal Year 2018, four general aviation aircraft were cleared at Plattsburgh International Airport, Kreig said. That number increased to 13 for Fiscal Year 2019.

Between last October, when the Inspection Station opened, and the beginning of July, 220 aircraft have been cleared.

Officers typically cleared three or four aircraft each week, particularly military craft, when the facility first opened. Just prior to when the COVID-19 outbreak hit the United States, that number had increased to 10 to 12.

Kreig recalled a couple weeks when 15 craft were cleared.

“We are certainly trying to grow the general aviation piece of this airport and one of the ways of doing that is with customs," he added.

COST-SAVING MEASURES

Toward the end of March and into April, operations slowed due to the pandemic, to four or fewer aircraft each week that mostly carried cargo, Kreig said.

He emphasized that COVID-19 affected all airports, not just Plattsburgh International.

As local revenues such as sales tax were also impacted by the pandemic, the county started looking into cost-saving measures.

Around April, Kreig reached out to CBP to inquire about the airport’s options for providing customs service.

“We’re trying to figure out ways of saving money and if there’s a way we can not have to pay for a period of time … we’d like to explore that option," he said.

“At the same time we were asking that question, just about every other airport in the user fee program was asking that question.”

CBP POLICY

In response, CBP came out with a policy for all user fee facility program airports where they could either continue to pay to offer customs or pause their operations for the last quarter of the federal fiscal year, Kreig said.

Plattsburgh International chose the latter option. Kreig estimated that suspending customs will save the county somewhere between $100,000 to $150,000, since the county would normally pay the officers’ salaries.

The officers assigned to the airport work at the border and, if needed and based on availability, they can come down so aircraft can still clear customs, Kreig said.

“Customs has been pretty good locally,” Kreig said. “They’ve been a good partner to the airport, they continue to be a good partner to the airport and to the county.”

The airport currently clears about half a dozen craft each week.

INTEND TO CONTINUE

The CBP policy also required airports to state their intentions on whether they plan to continue with or leave the user fee facility program.

The airport received correspondence from CBP this week that that time has come.

“It’s our intention (at this point) to continue in the program because, quite honestly, it took a long time, it took us years to get to the point where we have customs,” Kreig said.

“We don’t want to walk away from that because, eventually, things are going to settle down, things are going to go back to some semblance of normalcy and we’re going to want them at this airport because there are things that we’re going to want to do that we’re going to need them for.”

Email Cara Chapman:

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Twitter: @PPR_carachapman

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