In the ongoing controversy over where and if a new airport site should be selected, the "battle of the letters" is finding its own place in Friedman Memorial Airport's growing archives of documents.
Friedman's only two air carriers, SkyWest Airlines and Horizon Air, have written letters to the airport's governing body to argue that economic risks—stemming from a loss of passengers—may stem from locating a new airport too distant from the present field in Hailey.
The exchange now involves a new response from airport consultant Mike Boggs, of Mead & Hunt, to earlier airline letters to the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority. Boggs is the lead researcher on questions of relative effects of potential site distances from the Wood River Valley resort area.
In an April 4 letter to authority Chairwoman Martha Burke, Horizon Air Vice President Patrick Zachwieja expressed concerns about the increased tenant costs at a new airport, estimated to cost $100 million, and the possibility of losing passengers unwilling to drive more than 45 minutes from a new field.
In addition, in a March 28 letter, SkyWest Vice President Steven Hart outlined substantially similar economic concerns.
In his reply, Mead & Hunt consultant Boggs wrote:
· A new airport outside the Wood River environs that would have full all-weather instrument landing aids and no nearby obstructing terrain would virtually eliminate flight diversions and cancellations due to weather, now estimated to be 22 percent of Friedman Memorial's commercial operations.
· The most distant site under consideration in Camas County—42 miles from the Sun Valley area—compares favorably with other ski resort airports in Colorado: Vail, 36 miles; Montrose (near Telluride), 70 miles; and Steamboat Springs, 28 miles. (SkyWest, incidentally, operates Denver service out of Montrose.)
· Conceding a new airport's distance entails risks, air carriers should weigh the risks of remaining at Friedman, whose periodic weather shutdowns prevent operations and safety status limits the size of commercial aircraft.
· Although SkyWest says it may replace its aging fleet of Brasilia turbo-props with a larger turbo-prop such as Horizon Air's Q400 Bombardier DeHaviland aircraft that could service Friedman, the Q400 is a C-III category aircraft and Friedman is not certified as a C-III airport. A new airport would allow for virtually unrestricted operations of airliners.
· Revenue guarantees or subsidies for airlines that maintain unprofitable service to the area should be studied. But scope and size of the subsidies provided by community groups or through taxes cannot be precisely calculated without knowing the type of aircraft used, flight frequency and competition involved, factors not yet decided since a new airport is at least 10 years away. Although a standby revenue guarantee is available for Horizon Air's seasonal service from the West Coast to Sun Valley, it wasn't used this winter because of profitable operations. Mead & Hunt calculates that Horizon's Sun Valley service has a premium ticket price of 21.54 cents per mile flown, versus 18.22 cents per mile for the airline's system average.
