And the clock is ticking, as a five-member local task force works hard to keep the airport’s designation as a commercial facility, thereby protecting federal funding that isn’t available to small airports used only by general aviation (private) planes.
The terminal remains quiet, open 12 hours a day instead of 16 as it was when a commercial passenger service used its runways and hangars and sold tickets. The Hertz rent-a-car desk is doing business, however, because people now must sometimes rent cars to make the trip to catch a flight out of Raleigh’s airport instead of flying directly from here to Raleigh or other places for domestic or international flights.
At night, a decorative old Pinehurst-style tower on a recently remodeled facade beams its lonely light, surrounded by a pool of darkness.
“A lot of things are happening right now, in parallel terms,” said Caleb Miles, president and chief executive officer of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Miles is a member of a five-man task force organized to work to restore commercial passenger service.
“Right now we are saying that if there is going to be air service, it will be with Corporate Airlines,” Miles said.
The Tennessee-based service is in serious negotiations with the task force and members of a six-community consortium working to restore jet passenger service on a network basis to six airports in this part of North Carolina.
The chances are good, according to Corporate’s chief executive officer, Doug Caldwell. He met recently in Raleigh with Miles; task force members; representatives of the Aviation Division of the N.C. Department of Transportation; and representatives of the N.C. Department of Commerce. The subject of the meeting was putting together a combination of funding sources.
The sources might include a possible $4 million federal grant for rural airport service; support from local business communities who are going to be expected to commit themselves to tangible incentive packages to start service up again here; and state agencies that might put in a piece of financial support.
Regional Approach
Not that the local airport is deserted.
One jetliner was parked on the hot tarmac for so long last summer that the wheels left “dimples” when the owner who had brought thoroughbred racing horses with him for Horse Country events finally departed weeks later, airport Executive Director Michael Shouse said.
But the hustle and bustle of incoming and outgoing passengers, baggage, ticket sellers and other activity in busy terminals is absent. For how long, no one is certain. But Miles said in a telephone interview that the airport could be ready in a week or two to announce the name of the major airline with which Corporate Air is planning to contract for shuttle service to the six regional airports.
The six airports include Moore, Cumberland (Fayetteville), New Bern, Kinston, Hickory and Wilmington. Moore County Airport and Hickory are the only ones that lack any type of commercial passenger service. The others have reduced service from major airlines and want to improve their service by adding Corporate.
If funding comes, along with government agency approval of a new major airline service startup at any airport, Corporate would probably provide shuttle service via turboprop jets directly from the six major airports in the consortium to Raleigh-Durham International, Caldwell said last week.
“There would be no hopping from airport to airport among the consortium stops,” said task force member Bob Hawkins of Pinehurst, retired corporate sales director for American Airlines.
Caldwell said Corporate has done extensive research and lobbying at the federal and state levels. The company is supported by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Dole and John Edwards. A grant proposal is being put together for the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Aviation Division to access the federal grant.
Tuesday’s first anniversary of the big chill would be long gone when, in several months, the new service could be set up by the task force’s yearlong effort. Earlier networking among airport officials and Corporate Airlines executives paved the way for the successful efforts. Caldwell is talking to this consortium exclusively in North Carolina, officials say.
Caldwell’s firm already has a record of successful similar regional service to New Bern through Midway Airlines, which has since stopped service.
Both Corporate and the task force are producing business plans to help document and encourage federal and state aid.
Corporate already works through American Airlines to furnish regional service to 14 airports in the Missouri-Tennessee region.
“This is a community that would always be able to support air service,” Shouse said.
Economic Troubles
Last April 15, when the financially troubled CCAir stopped connecting passengers at the local airport with its contractor, the US Airways hub in Charlotte, the nation and its airlines were in the grip of post-Sept. 11, 2001, malaise — which only deepened existing economic troubles.
People weren’t as comfortable flying. When they did buy tickets, airport security was cumbersome. Add to that downturn in passenger travel the high cost of jet fuel and cuts in ticket prices that airlines had to make to remain competitive among a shrinking passenger market, and several have since gone belly-up. Meanwhile, the vicious circle of fewer passengers and other economy measures leading to service cuts have further hurt the airlines.
As a whole, major airlines continue to experience troubles. But American Airlines managed to back away from bankruptcy by reaching an agreement with labor unions to accept pay cuts to keep the airline afloat. American is the service that Corporate Airlines is primarily using now.
The local airport’s policy is made by the Airport Authority, appointed by the Moore County Board of Commission-ers. The task force for airline service operates independently of the authority and consists of other people, but the authority receives progress reports.
Win-Win Situation
“This looks like a win-win situation,” J.T. Cotner, a longtime member and former chairman of the Moore County Airport Authority, said in a telephone interview. “We must make our community and its leaders understand that nobody trying to establish a new air service today is going to be able to persuade an airline to come here without a subsidy.”
Such incentives that other community airports have come up with include “travel banks,” where a certain number of tickets will be guaranteed by different businesses to support flight service. It costs more than $250,000 a month to operate a carrier service at one airport, according to studies done by the task force.
When an air service gets up and running, the business might have a “credit” in the “travel bank,” and actually get free service back.
Cotner believes the loss of CCAir’s service was the airline’s fault, not that of the authority or local officials.
“They shot themselves in the foot” he said.
“Shorts,” otherwise known as boxlike planes with smaller passenger capacity, were used at first to serve the Moore County Airport when CCAir started service here in 1991. These were roomy enough to hold passengers and their luggage, which more often than not included a golf bag.
Most of the steady local airline passengers came from the Northeast to play golf, Cotner said.
CCAir, however, began to cut corners and stopped using the “shorts” right before the 1999 U.S. Open, when Pinehurst expected 40,000 visitors for the international event. Cotner said the authority pleaded with the service to restore some of the “shorts” service.
But it never happened, so that CCAir continued to serve the Moore County Airport with larger-passenger-capacity planes but without sufficient luggage space to allow people to arrive with their golf bags in many cases. That was a damper to getting golfing visitors to use the airline.
“We know there is a demand, because when CCAir started with the shorts, we went from zero departures to about 50,000, growing more quickly than even they anticipated,” Cotner said.
But with the less convenient airplanes, annual boardings declined by half when CCAir finally stopped all service. It has since disappeared from business.
“All this at a time when Pinehurst was doubling in size,” Cotner said.
Corporate is prepared to serve the airport with the same type of turboprop jets that CCAir used toward the end, but Cotner has been told that Corporate would remove one or two passenger seats to create enough luggage space in the adapted plane to allow golfers to arrive with their golf bags and other luggage at the same time.
Another problem was the inconvenience of having to fly west to Charlotte when taking a CCAir flight, when most travelers from this area come and go northeast, to New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The fares were also higher than most wanted to pay for the quality of service. The inconvenience of having to first fly west to catch a flight heading east, coupled with cost, encouraged many people to drive to RDU to catch a flight north from there and bypass the Moore County Airport. This contributed to declining boardings.
More Direct Flights
The Corporate service would take people directly to RDU, which has the most competitive ticket prices in the state, officials said, because several major airlines are scheduled there. CCAir’s contractor, USAir, was the “owner” of the Charlotte hub.
Caldwell said favorable ticket prices at RDU are a big advantage for a regional service’s appeal to passengers.
“We are looking at three or four flights a day,” he said in a telephone interview from Tennessee. ”We are working together on some issues such as funding.”
Other details would be premature to discuss, Caldwell said. He and others met last recently in Raleigh with state officials in an ongoing series of telephone conference calls and face-to-face meetings to firm up possible ways of dividing up the costs and responsibilities among parties to a commercial air service.
“Our charges would be add-ons to the already low Raleigh ticket fares, ranging from $30 to $60 per segment, depending on the distance,” Caldwell said.
If a person were to buy a ticket on one of Corporate’s major airline shuttles destined to take off from Moore County Airport to Raleigh to New York, for example, he would pay only one “add-on charge,” possibly as little as $35 per ticket, and the deal would allow someone to buy only one ticket even though he may change planes.
For the return trip, the customer would pay another “add-on” charge for what the industry calls the second “segment,” back to Moore County Airport, Caldwell said.
“That’s less than it costs to drive to RDU,” he said.
Task force member Bob Hawkins said recently that the local airline market contains many retired people who would like to travel on “personal” business, such as to visit family members.
Many don’t want to drive, not even to Raleigh or Fayetteville, to catch a flight, both because of the inconvenience and because driving in heavy traffic for 45 minutes to 90 minutes to catch a plane is tiring for many.
“One of the attractions of having service here is that the processing through security is much quicker, easier and more comfortable because this is a smaller place, with smaller numbers of passengers,” Hawkins said.
The Moore County Airport’s designation as a commercial aviation facility also helps with funding.
The Federal Aviation Administration provides 90 percent of improvement funds. The federal government would provide all of the security services for commercial passenger service and some other support. The airport would continue to be listed among the more attractive communities that bring economic development to an area, remaining in “the loop” for more business.
If the FAA funds were lost because of permanent reduction of the level of service to a general aviation (private plane) status, the airport’s financial support would be limited to state and local money, plus whatever revenues can be gained from fuel sales and other services to the limited private plane market.
Miles is sending a letter to about 800 local businesses, asking for their support and commitment to support a new airline service, at least at the beginning.
Moore County Airport is the only commercial-capacity facility in this six-county region, Shouse said. Montgomery, Lee, Hoke, Richmond and Scotland counties have either no airport or only general aviation service.
“This is not a fishing expedition,” Miles said. “Corporate wants to provide service. This is the only proposal they are considering in North Carolina. The mindset and intent has changed. Today, you have to do your homework, get community support, come up with a unique approach and get the full support of the state and federal officials.”
Besides Shouse, Miles, and Hawkins, other task force members include Moore County Interim Manager Mike Griffin and Mike Czarcinski, vice president of sales for Pinehurst Inc.
A Seasonal Business
Seasonal ups and downs have been a fact of life at the Moore County Airport and are likely to continue.
The spring and fall are the busiest times for the airport, as for much of southern Moore, because that’s when the golf resorts get the most guests.
Caldwell expects a minimum annual average level of business at the airport, so that good months would be balanced by not-so-good months in the overall annual business picture.
Meanwhile, casual observers aware that there is currently no commercial service tend to question members of the authority or others about where the money is coming from to spiff up the terminal’s front entrance.
From the road on N.C. 22, visitors now see a façade looking like historic Pinehurst — architectural white clapboard-and-turret-style vinyl and more user-friendly signs.
Departing passengers will see a large, prominently lettered sign over the door they are supposed to enter. Before, the terminal building “looked like a storefront,” as Shouse describes it. A canopy was put up soon after he came in 2001 over the main front entrance to protect people from bad weather.
The canopy was blown off, however, in a damaging storm last year, which also hurt some other property.
The $100,000 worth of improvements were “painless,” Shouse said, because the FAA paid for 90 percent from federal funds that would have to be returned if not spent by the end of the budget year. Another 5 percent came from the state, and the remaining 5 percent from an insurance claim paid to the county for the damage. None of the money came from county tax funds to facelift the building front, Shouse said.
Some interior improvements are partly completed but have been halted for now for lack of money to complete them until various fees and revenues from operations come back up, or more money is available from the FAA or other sources.
The county does not provide money to support the airport, but only for debt service to pay off loans incurred when the commissioners voted several decades ago to purchase the airport property from another owner.
The county currently owns the fixed assets (land, buildings and airport equipment) but this year pays $136,000 only for the debt service, totaling $176,000, Griffin said. The Airport Authority has to come up with the remaining $40,000 to pay this year’s debt service.
“Now it looks like a commercial airport,” Shouse said. “This painless improvement gives us an image we need to have.”
Economy Needs Airport
Moore County needs the airport for its economy, not just as an image-builder. Studies done across the country link the services an airport can provide to the public as being vital to the surrounding area’s economy. The better the airport service, the better the quality of transportation and business activity, not to mention general passenger service.
“We deserve an airline,” Airport Authority Chairman Harold Garner said. “We need one with our tourism industry. I think we can get one economical enough to draw people back in.”
Anne Sherer, manager of AAA Vacations travel agency, said she would love to have airline passenger service back.
“We’re having to send people out of town to catch planes,” she said. “It’s difficult for our residents to drive all the way to places like Raleigh or Charlotte to catch a flight. We used this airport a lot when it had commercial passenger service.”
She also pointed out that, because the volume of passengers at the local airport would be less than at major airports, security checks wouldn’t be as inconveniently lengthy as at the larger ones. Passengers leaving from RDU, Charlotte, or other big hubs must arrive 90 minutes at the minimum, sometimes two hours early to get through the heightened security checks.
Hertz car rental service in the airport building is doing a steady business, said its manager, who declined to go into any more detail.
Part-time Hertz window employee Anthony Davis said he hears all the time from people who would like to have flight service.
“There are a lot of IBM personnel who live here,” he said. “They travel around the country as part of their jobs.”
Some come to rent a Hertz vehicle to drive to another airport or another business destination,” Davis said. “These are regular business travelers. A couple moving here from California came in to check out the flights, only to find there aren’t any. The husband is still working and would want to fly regularly on business from here if possible. Otherwise, he’d have to drive to another city to catch his regular flights and might end up moving somewhere else for that reason alone.
There are many people in their 70s, Davis said, who prefer the convenience of flying on personal business rather than driving and parking at another airport.
“The Corporate Airline ticket fee is not an issue,” he said. “People really miss the service.”
