NOTE: The GAO is currently analyzing the Essential Air Service Program. The following was part of this week’s Touch & Go vision letter. The incredible nonsense is the belief that any service anointed as being funded by EAS is wondrously “essential.” Time for some honesty, and it’s time to move the program out of the 1970s. Small airports: stop with the bogus “leakage” studies and assumptions that a “catchment area” is geographic. That’s consultant jive. Travel-time-efficiency is the critical metric, not coffee-table documents passed off as solutions.
Summary: EAS is emblematic of the outdated assumptions that have wasted millions pandering to obsolete small community air service development approaches – both EAS and non-EAS. Whether the proposed cuts go through or not, EAS in its current form is a doomed program. So are a lot of schemes to “lure” flights to rural airports. New thinking – tough thinking – is needed.
I just came across a media article from Chicago, warning the world that the Trump Administration’s proposed budget intends to cut back funding for the Essential Air Service Program would end air service at downstate airports. The conclusion in the media is that these communities would suffer major economic damage should EAS be cut.
That is pure ignorance.
Air Transportation And Communication Modalities Have Evolved. EAS Has Not. Tumble to it: the original premise of the almost fifty year old EAS program is now dead as a dodo at many of the airports involved. It’s neither “essential” nor is it “air service.” It is a subsidy built on assumptions that died years ago.
The belief that small communities need to have the talisman of near-empty flights to ward off economic disaster needs to be brightly illuminated and corrected.
Here’s some honesty that might not set well with some folks out there in Airportland: EAS at Decatur and Quincy is a gigantic waste of taxpayer money underwriting flights that consumers won’t widely use because they’ve found better, more time-efficient airport alternatives.
These alternative air access options – which consumers are actually using – include (gasp!) the need to drive to another airport that can support far better – and more time-effective – air transportation than the local EAS-guzzling airport ever will.
Anybody Have a Watch? Like, To Determine What Year This Is? Start with this: air transportation is a communication modality. Okay, think about it: how much have communication channels changed in the past half a century? How has the value and utilization and structure of air transportation changed in the past half a century? How have alternative technologies and economics advanced?
And how has the EAS program adjusted? Answer: how ‘bout not at all.
The Essential Air Service program is designed for an air transportation system that existed in 1978. Back then, there was a robust and growing independent commuter/regional airline industry.
Back then, there was interlining between carriers. Back then, there was no internet. There were no instantaneous exchanges of data. Back then, those important government documents needed to be physically carried from the state capital of Albany to the county seats at Riverhead and Mineola via flights to and from Islip.
Today, there are no flights between Albany and Islip. The communication need those US Airways DC-9s filled forty years ago has evaporated.
Back then, air transportation was in many aspects the fastest modality for information transfer – and for human interaction. Not the case here in the real world of half a century later.
Think about it. If it needs more explanation, please stop reading.
Anybody Have A Watch? Like, To Determine The Time-Value of EAS? Here is the intellectual vapor hole into which knee-jerk EAS proponents repeatedly dive into. They assume that just having “flights” – any flights, typically – will magically connect the airport to the rest of the transportation system and unshackle local consumers from having to drive to use other airports.
Air travel is all about time-efficiency. The EAS-istas will claim that a local flight is far better and more efficient than having consumers drive an hour or more to a larger airport.
That is clear nonsense. It is also the intellectual goo that consultants pander to civic leaders at small non-EAS airports. Unfortunately, today it is being spoon-fed to several communities when instead telling the hard truth of economic realities would be far more ethical.
There are appalling websites out there, assuring gullible communities that adding them to the current EAS program will do the trick, if only congress would allocate bazillions more dollars to the program. No analysis of airline and air transportation realities. Just tap into the wonderous EAS program. Regardless of the intent, these sites are irresponsible snake oil.
Anathema Facts. Decatur’s EAS is a prime example that proves the Administration’s point. It has just two daily weekday departures to ORD on UA-branded CRJ-200s. One leaves at 9:37 AM and the other at 6:45 PM. Period. Real convenient, right? Not.
Just 45 minutes away – less time (a lot less time) than folks in Syosset need to allow to get to LGA – Decatur consumers have the option at Bloomington/Normal of Delta 3X a day to Atlanta, American 2X to Chicago/ORD and 2X on American to DFW. In short, flights throughout the day.
The paltry schedule at Decatur – which EAS fans assure us is a “lifeline” to the globe -cannot compete.
Consider: the departure at 9:37 means connections at ORD at noon or after. An all-day journey to just about anywhere. The 18:45 flight dumps passengers into a very limited late-evening United connecting bank.
Plus, for the consumer looking to return to Decatur from Phoenix who finds the ORD-DEC flight is cancelled, or his planned connection at ORD will be missed, it’s sing-the-blues time. Using BMI, at least there could be alternatives.
The EAS at Decatur is completely non time-competitive with alternatives open to consumers. But according to the official doggerel, Decatur is in danger of losing air service – flights that almost nobody uses. DEC is just one of many such examples.
Yessir, Decatur’s load factor is 33% – equating to about 16 enplaned passengers a flight. At BMI, flights are just a hair below 80% full and represent seven flights a day to three global airline hubs, with substantial percentages of these departures on mainline-cabin E175 airliners.
The truth – often short in the EAS discussion – is that today, Decatur has strong air service. It has strong connectivity to the rest of the globe.
It just isn’t at the local airport.
Anybody Got A Watch? Like, To Understand That The Current EAS Program Is On A Short Half-Life. Let’s state it clearly: what the Trump Administration is proposing is solid, air service policy.It is also functionally inevitable, all the gnashing of civic teeth notwithstanding.
The EAS program is largely a failure as it is structured today. It does waste money. It does provide in many cases placebo air service.
Putting it bluntly, the entire obsolete and financially-putrefying program needs to be re-built and re-assessed in order to be brought out of its half-century obsolescence.
Better make sure it’s future-planned, and not founded on bogus airline economic assumptions. The fleets of small jets, including the present availability of SkyWest CRJ-200s that might be able to offer mainline branded service, are shrinking.
Point: the number of airlines and aircraft that fit within a re-structured EAS program are evaporating. Regionalization of the type noted above is going to be reality.
That means most of the desperate attempts at “luring” new flights to small community local airports are going to fail. For economic reasons, but in most cases because such service is not time-competitive. There will be exceptions, but few. In that regard, do a search on small airports losing service when the subsidy, from whatever source, has run dry.
Those obsolete leakage analyses and catchment area studies are no longer the top analytical modalities to measure the potential of local air service. Grab the watch instead and use it.
Time is the main value.
We’ll talk more in the near future regarding futurist approaches to craft access solutions. Meanwhile, I would strongly suggest that small communities look at the time factor first before shelling out on more shenanigans to “lure” more service to town.
Questions, go to our website and give us an email.
