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Sunday, May. 24, 2009

Who might fly Somerset to D.C. and back?

TAXPAYERS SUBSIDIZE SERVICE THAT COINCIDES WITH WEEKEND

WASHINGTON — The lone commercial airline serving Republican Rep. Hal Rogers' hometown of Somerset offers discounted fares starting at $39 on half-empty nine-seat planes thanks to a $1 million taxpayer-subsidized grant.

Customers zip through security at Lake Cumberland Regional Airport's $3 million, federally funded commercial terminal, which sat virtually empty for three years as local officials struggled to get a carrier to provide service to the rural town of about 12,000 that sits 77 miles south of Lexington's Blue Grass Airport.

Next month, that long-awaited carrier, Locair, which currently offers four 45-minute round-trip flights to Nashville each week, will add service from Somerset to Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday mornings and Friday evenings — the same days and times government officials and companies with government contracts tend to travel back and forth between Washington and their hometowns.

Passengers will initially pay less than $200 per ticket. Taxpayers could pay upward of $2,000 per flight.

Rogers considers the air service part of an important drive to spur development and grow tourism in southern and eastern Kentucky.

"It should come as no surprise to anyone that I support initiatives throughout the region that will encourage economic development, improve our environment, increase public safety, and grow tourism," said Rogers, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for allocating funds for the Department of Transportation grant program Somerset is using to subsidize the flights.

"The carrier has to make good business decisions, and routing is an integral component of that," said Rogers. "Any misplaced assertions that I somehow secured the grant, selected the carrier and determined the routes are simply not true."

Critics consider the air service to the rural area "a good concept with disastrous execution."

"It would make more sense to rent a car when you get to Louisville and drive," said aviation consultant Michael Boyd. "They're running a 19-seat airplane with nine seats on it. North of them they have Louisville with a lot of service, and south of them they have Nashville with a lot of service. A lot of these ideas are nutty fruitcake and just don't work."

Pilot program

Since 2002, under the direction of Congress, the Department of Transportation has pumped $110 million into the Small Community Air Service Development Program, a pilot program that some small cities like Somerset, which have problems luring consistent air carrier service or are forced to pay high air fares, are using to heavily subsidize air service.

Over the past decade, Congress has also channeled more than $1 billion into the Essential Air Service program, a highly criticized program with a similar purpose of subsidizing flights to rural communities. Somerset does not participate in the Essential Air Service program.

In some cases, cities that participate in the programs are within easy driving distance of larger airports.

Somerset, for example, is a 90-minute drive south of Lexington, two and a half hours south of Louisville and roughly three hours north of Nashville.

A 2007 Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General review showed communities that netted Small Community Air Service Development Program grants have a 30 percent success rate in sustaining air service in the year after those grants expire.

Somerset was awarded a grant in 2005 and has scrambled every year since to secure several extensions as air carriers backed out on contracts, ran afoul of Federal Aviation Administration regulations or folded altogether. It now has roughly a year to make the air service a success.

"A lot of times these cities think, 'If we don't have this, we won't get economic development,'" Boyd said. "That presupposes that those are places people want to fly to, and it also presupposes it's airplanes people will get on."

One of 37 cities

For nearly two decades, Somerset officials have pinned their hopes on the idea that air service would bolster the area's economic development efforts.