Airport board to interview EAS airlines

By TOM LAVENTURE

tlaventure@yourdailyglobe.com

Ironwood Township — Three passenger airline companies will present their bids to be the next Essential Air Service carrier for the Gogebic-Iron County Airport later this month.

The Gogebic-Iron County Airport Board scheduled a special meeting for July 22 to hear proposals from Denver Air, Southern Airways Corporation, and AirChoice One. The meetings will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the airport terminal building to accommodate arrivals and opportunities to view aircraft that may be part of the proposal. 

The three airlines that are bidding to provide EAS service were reviewed and qualified to bid by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Gogebic-Iron County Airport is eligible for EAS as a rural or small-community airport and qualifies for the EAS subsidy for a commercial operator to provide regular passenger service using a combination of U.S. DOT funding and matching funds from both counties.

All three of the bidding airlines were applicants when the two-year contract was due to be renewed in early 2020 for service to start in August. 

AirChoice One had operated as the EAS airline from 2014 to July 2020. The airline applied for another two-year contract but the award went to Boutique Air, Inc., which started service in August. The contract was to run through 2022 until the airline and the airport board agreed to mutually resign from the contract following two potentially dangerous airplane mishaps and other issues regarding on-time arrivals and cancellations. 

The airline attributed the issues to a pilot shortage and that its fleet of Pilatus PC-12 airplanes turned out not to be an optimum aircraft for daily commercial passenger service, according to comments from airline officials at a previous airport board meeting. Boutique won the bid in part for providing pressurized cabins, on board restrooms and a faster flight with the dual prop airplane. 

Boutique was also favored over Air Choice One for providing a major airline interline agreement for seamless ticketing and baggage service to the end destination. Without the interline agreement, passengers need to repeat stops at baggage claims and flight-check-ins when making a flight connection.

Denver Air Connection had proposed to provide 30-seat and 50-seat passenger jet service in the previous bid. The proposal was considered but fell out of contention because it offered service only to Chicago and not to Minneapolis.

Southern, which also operates as Southern Airways Express and Mokulele Airlines, has routes in Hawaii, the Rockies and California, the Gulf Coast, the Mid-Atlantic, New England and New York. 

The board heard a general aviation terminal study report from Stephanie Ward, an aviation engineer with Mead & Hunt, the airport’s contracted engineering firm. The planning is required for grant applications to the Michigan Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration. 

Ward presented five options for a multi use hangar that, if approved by the board, would be included in a revised airport layout plan to combine structures near the current passenger terminal including a larger hangar.

The project proposals would be estimated to start in around five years. 

In other business, the board approved:

— An $11,575 estimated bid for five airport firefighting proximity suits.

— A $2,500 purchase of a 1,000 gallon deicing container tank and trailer from an airport in southern Michigan.