Merced, Castle airports jockey for clients

March 30--It's a tale of two airports -- one in the city, one in the county.

Competition is heating up between the two, and recently, the Merced city airport came up shortchanged after some of its activity was whisked away to Castle Airport in the county.

Each has a distinctive set of resources available to it, but the relationship between officials at each site has become shaky as they compete for similar business.

In mid-March, Charter Air Transport, an aviation tour company, started landing planes at Castle Airport instead of Merced Regional Airport because of Castle's facilities and longer runway.

The move didn't sit well with Tom Lopes, president of Gateway Air Center, which fuels and services planes at Merced Regional.

Lopes claims that the county has undercut business he attracts at Merced Regional rather than going out and attracting its own business.

Lopes spoke at a Merced City Council meeting earlier this month, saying that because of an "unfortunate chain of events," the city lost a valuable customer to the county.

But officials at Gemini Flight Support, a company that services and fuels planes at Castle Airport, says that it does market and try to attract its own customers. They said Charter Air Transport's business was a deal that simply fell in their lap.

County officials agree with that assessment, and assert that they're committed to both airports succeeding.

Regardless of how Castle Airport ended up with the business, Merced Regional lost important revenue from the move.

Brad Grant, Merced Regional's finance director, said the city will lose about $1,000 a month because of a reduction in fuel flowage fees and luggage belt loader rentals.

That money would've gone into the city's Airport Enterprise Fund, which helps to operate the airport.

Beyond those losses, Merced Regional Airport will take a hit in passenger totals, an important figure for the airport that could allow for more capital improvement grant funding from the Federal Aviation Administration.

If the airport were to reach 10,000 passengers a year, the airport's grant money from the FAA would go from $150,000 a year to $1 million a year, Grant said.

The significant increase in funds could be used to improve infrastructure at the airport, but the milestone will be tougher to reach without the passengers from the charter serv-ice.

"This would help us get much closer to the 10,000," Grant said. "It wouldn't get us over that, but it would get us much closer to that."

Although Merced Regional suffered some loss from the charter service's move, Castle Airport has seen a significant spike in activity.

Fuel purchases doubled, the number of passengers doubled and overall activity at the airport has seen a major upswing in the past two weeks, said Mark Hendrickson, director of commerce, aviation and economic development for Merced County.

"We can easily accommodate this activity," he said. "We are seeing a bit of a resurgence at Castle."

Hendrickson also said that no one at Castle Airport poached any of the city's business. The charter service approached Gemini, which agreed to service the flights.

Merced Mayor Stan Thurston isn't just the man at the helm of the city, he's also a major player at Castle Airport in his capacity as co-owner, president and general manager of Gemini Flight Support.

But Thurston said he had no role in taking business away from the city and to the county, and added that Charter Air Transport became interested in Castle when it had to land there once because of thick fog at Merced Regional.

Copyright 2012 - Merced Sun-Star, Calif.