For the week of February 12-18, 2003

Airport use projected
to increase over time

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By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer

Demand for private and commercial use of Friedman Memorial Airport will increase substantially over the next 20 years, and the community will need to decide if it wants to expand facilities there to meet that demand.

That was the message that a consultant gave to the airport authority during a Feb. 5 meeting at the Old County Courthouse in Hailey.

The consultant’s analysis is part of an ongoing airport master plan update. The previous plan was adopted in 1994. Airport Manager Rick Baird said in an interview that the Federal Aviation Administration, which is funding most of the plan, likes to see updates about every five years.

Mike Boggs, manager of airport business services with Mead and Hunt, based in Eugene, Ore., said his firm estimates that commercial traffic at Friedman will grow at a rate of 3.8 percent annually between now and 2022.

Compared to other resort areas, current commercial use of the airport is surprisingly low, Boggs said. He pointed out that indicators based on resort demographics and economics show Aspen and Jackson Hole to have only three-quarters of the expected traffic that Sun Valley has, yet the airports there have more than double the traffic of Friedman.

"This community has lots of upside potential in terms of passenger traffic," Boggs said.

In an interview, Boggs said most other resorts competing with Sun Valley have flights from more places than does Sun Valley. Until this winter, commercial flights to Friedman arrived only from Salt Lake City and Seattle. Beginning Dec. 15, Horizon Air began flights from Los Angeles.

A $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation guarantees the profitability of those flights for a year. Boggs said most resort towns in Sun Valley’s market have used subsidies to aggressively promote air travel. He said many of those are now operating at a profit.

Regarding private air travel, Mead and Hunt estimates a near-term demand for 40 additional planes to be based at Friedman. Over the next 20 years, demand is expected to increase by about 50 percent over the current 143 planes. Private landings and takeoffs are estimated to increase from the current 50,000 per year to over 70,000.

Tom Schnetzer, Mead and Hunt’s manager of airport planning services, told the authority board that not only are numbers expected to increase, but that private air traffic at Friedman will follow a nationwide trend toward larger planes and a change from prop planes to jets.

"There is a desire for people to base aircraft here if we could build hangars," he said.

Schnetzer and airport administrators emphasized that the demand will not necessarily be met.

"These are some really necessary analytical operations that we need to do to set the foundation for options," Schnetzer said.

He said he and Boggs would be back before the airport authority in April or May with more projections. In the meantime, the four-member authority voted unanimously to approve the consultant’s projections and to forward them to the FAA for its review.

The master plan update is funded 90 percent by the FAA and 10 percent locally. In an interview, Baird said the agency reviews the plan’s framework, but makes none of its decisions.

"They let the community decide what the airport’s going to be," he said.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.