Passengers don’t power area’s airport
Technician Stacy Browne makes adjustments after a plane’s engines started before take off Friday at Stebbins Aviation at the East Texas Regional Airport in Gregg County.
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"Longview has a fine airport. However, Mr. Stebbins needs to get out more. His statement that the Tyler airport does not have a tower is completely wrong (or misquoted). Tyler does indeed have an on-site FAA staffed tower facility which handles its local traffic." -Browser
Siblings Henry and Mavie Smith watched their mother board an American Eagle flight one morning this past week at East Texas Regional Airport.
Siblings Henry and Mavie Smith watched their mother board an American Eagle flight one morning this past week at East Texas Regional Airport.
The pair chatted with Transportation Security Administration agents on duty in the terminal while waiting for their mother’s flight, the first of two daily passenger flights, to take off. And Mary Smith was soon on her way along with 48 other passengers who boarded at the Henry Atkinson Terminal.
“If we didn’t have a regional airport, we’d be in trouble,” Henry Smith said, noting his mother’s occasional flights. “It means the world to us. It’s cheaper to leave from here than to drive to (Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport) and go through all that hell up there.”
That’s because the ticket price to a major city is the same whether the passenger is leaving Longview or Dallas, they said. The scene the Smiths joined Tuesday was typical for the regional airport south of Longview, but it barely qualified as the tip of the iceberg of daily doings there.
“And I like another thing about this airport — the runway is real, real long,” Smith added, bringing up a big reason most activity at East Texas Regional is not the commercial operations most East Texans think about when they picture the airport. Rather, it is more about noncommercial operations, or general aviation.
“Most people see it and think it’s all airline flights going on out here,” airport Director Rick Davis said. “But that’s less than 1 percent.”
The 99 percent occupying the airport’s two runways are general aviation interests — including LeTourneau University’s flight school, Stebbins Aviation’s charter business and other government, business and personal aviation operations.
That lopsided balance is unusual at airports of any size. But the 99 percent is what keeps East Texas Regional humming, while the 1 percent commercial passenger traffic qualifies the facility for Federal Aviation Administration grants such as one that recently repaved the parking lot and is poised to remake the main terminal. (Gregg County supplies a 5 percent match; the feds carry the rest.)
The county threw down everything, though, when it extended its main runway to 10,000 feet — long enough to accommodate any craft but a B52 or the new A380 double-decker super airplane.
“At that time, the county funded that whole (runway extension) project,” Davis said. “That runway was a wise move. We’re really lucky to have that (elected officials’) support out here. They know the value of the airport to the community.”
It didn’t hurt to have a president who wanted to land there, either.
The runway extension happened during the tenure of President Lyndon Johnson, who was married to Karnack native Lady Bird Johnson.
“Apparently, his wife wanted to come visit out here,” said Deputy Director Eugene Bolanowski. “So, we built the runway.”
Not only has Air Force One landed multiple times on that runway, its length also has made Longview a staging hub when disasters occur, such as when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart above East Texas in 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and, more recently, September’s wildfire outbreak.
The airport also is a diversion site for Dallas flights when weather or other issues crop up.
“At one time we had nine planes sitting here, lined up on the ramp because they were waiting to go back to DFW when the storm cleared,” Bolanowski said.
The 99 percent
A Foreign Trade Zone, for duty-free storage of goods in transit, arrived in the late 1990s. The officials report little activity on that section of the airport these days other than LeTourneau Technology’s share of the zone, which is actually at firm’s campus in Longview.
Other facets create more bustle — and revenue. That includes paychecks for 1,000 people whom Bolanowski said have badges to serve in various capacities there.
“We get tax revenues from people renting out here, also from rental and storage of aircraft out here,” Bolanowski said. “There’s a lot of economic incentives to have an airport.”
It’s difficult to cull the property values for the planes and other assets at the airport from the overall appraisals of each individual company or person using about 100 airplanes that call the airport’s 20 hangars home.
The head of one major player there, Stebbins Aviation, places $20 million in property value at the facility. Stebbins Aviation is a private, charter flight business that was born as a support for Longview-based Stebbins Five Cos., which operates nursing homes in Texas.
‘Far superior’
“We moved to Longview because of that facility,” said Dick Stebbins, president of Stebbins Aviation. “We could function out of a smaller strip, but Stebbins Five wouldn’t have come to Longview without that airport.”
The aviation company has five planes at Regional, but rents hangar space to another 35 craft. It also sells them fuel.
“A large part of our business comes from Louisiana,” Stebbins said. “Almost 50 percent of our charters are coming out of Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles — almost all oil-related companies. ... It’s far superior to Tyler (Pounds International Airport). It’s on par with Shreveport (Regional Airport) as an aviation facility — I’m not talking about commercial (passenger) aviation. It doesn’t really have a peer. It’s on par with Fort Worth Meachum (International) Airport.”
He backed that last statement citing the Longview airport’s long main runway and its control tower, which also handles air traffic control for Tyler Pounds. That airport doesn’t have a tower.
“That makes this probably the safest airport,” Stebbins added. “I think it’s the safest airport I’ve gone to.”
Other ratios
What Tyler Pounds does have is commercial aviation — nine daily passenger flights between American Airlines and Continental Airlines. Those translated to 74,277 passengers boarding in 2010 and 60,196 so far this year.
That contrasts with Longview’s 19,763 boardings in 2010 and 16,867 so far this year.
The Pounds Field commercial/general aviation balance, at roughly 40/60 in favor of general aviation, also contrasts with East Texas Regional’s 1/99 ratio.
At Shreveport, the commercial/general ratio is about 33/67, according to information from facility spokesman Mark Crawford.
Five airlines — Delta, Continental, American, Allegiant and Vision — take off or land 52 times a day in Shreveport. Crawford said the five commercial flyers welcomed 552,531 passengers in 2010 and 464,398 so far this year — on track for nearly an 11 percent increase in boardings.
“October was the 15th month of increased enplanement,” Crawford said. “And that’s commercial — there’s usually between 70 and 80 general aviation landings a day.”
Shreveport Regional also manages the old downtown airport where Southern University Airframe uses an old Federal Express plane as a training tool for mechanics.
A teaching tool
East Texas Regional Airport also is a training ground. This semester, 266 students are learning aviation mechanics, piloting and other flight-related skills using the 13 airplanes LeTourneau University keeps in its 55,000-square-foot hangar.
“We were the first air traffic control program in the state,” said LeTourneau Aviation Dean Fred Ritchey. “We had visitors here from Alaska just this week to see our lab.”
LeTourneau added its first aviation class in 1956, which was 10 years after the airport opened. A full program at the airport took off in the early 1960s.
“We’ve just had a terrific relationship,” Ritchey said, adding that county government, which owns the airport, has been a good partner. “It’s been a great place for our students to learn. ... There’s just a lot of infrastructure here that has really made our operation much more easily accomplished.”
Fly GGG
Davis, the airport director, said he would like to see more commercial flights out of GGG, as East Texas Regional is known to air traffic controllers and travel agents. It’s a designation that derives from “GreGG.”
“I’d like to see five or six flights a day out of here with American Airlines and another carrier if possible,” Davis said.
Stebbins said it amazes him that people spend the time and money to drive to DFW or Shreveport for commercial flights, particularly when the ticket price is the same from Longview.
“It never occurs to them just to book out of Longview,” Stebbins said. “It’s got a big parking lot — they just redid all that, and it’s free.
Amen that, Bolanowski said.
“I’d like to see that in big, bold print: Airport parking is free,” he said. “We’re one of the only airports that have free parking — short-term and long-term.”
Davis added he has spent a lifetime around aviation.
“And I kind of knew something about airports,” he said. “And this is something the community should be proud of. And, I think most of them are.”
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