The board says new Federal Aviation Administration rules have resulted in a pilot shortage in Riverton.
Passengers
flying in and out of Riverton soon will see a few changes in flight
schedules and business hours at the Airport Cafe, reported Riverton
Regional Airport division manager Paul Griffin during a board meeting
Friday.
Flight schedule changes will begin Sunday.
A
majority of the changes are for Riverton departure flights. Most
Saturday and Sunday flights will remain the same, and the airport will
continue to conduct three incoming and outgoing flights per day. Most
flight times will only change by a few minutes.
The Airport Cafe
hours also are changing to 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 6
a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday through Wednesday. The changes were made to
reflect the business's busiest hours.
Fewer pilots
During
the meeting, the airport board directed Griffin to draft a letter to
Chuck Howell, the chief executive officer of Great Lakes Airlines, which
operates at Riverton Regional Airport. The board said it wanted to
address the pilot shortage in Riverton, which has been attributed to new
Federal Aviation Administration pilot qualification standards.
"It's
not just a Great Lakes issue, it's statewide, and there's no quick fix
on the thing," Griffin said. "It's frustrating in our part, because
they're calling us telling us their flights are canceled."
The
new rule requires first officers or co-pilots to have 1,500 hours of
flight time. Co-pilots previously were required to have only 250 hours.
Great Lakes lost many of its pilots to bigger airlines after
implementation of the new rule. Griffin said Great Lakes would hire
pilots right out of flight school and train them, and when those pilots
reached 1,500 hours, they usually moved on to other airlines.
"We
have seen other carriers aggressively recruiting our qualified pilots,
and attrition has been more than double the normal rate," Howell wrote
in a letter to Great Lakes employees. "To further aggravate the
situation, there are limited pilots looking for work that meet the new
qualifications."
Howell said the board will inform the FAA of the effects the rule has on small communities and request an exemption.
Peranteaux
said lawmakers may not have been fully aware of how the changes in
flight hours would affect small communities and airlines.
"Fundamentally it needs to be dealt with on the legislative level," he said.
Board
member Cindy Olson suggested that instead of re-stating that there's a
problem, the letter should ask how the airport can assist Great Lakes to
better the situation and provide other solutions.
"You know it is the industry, the industry is in a state that it's never been in before," she said.
Cancellation notices
Board
member Dean Peranteaux said the lack of communication might be more of a
problem than the canceled flights. If there's a delayed or canceled
flight, he said the information is slow to reach passengers. By the time
they find out, the remaining options -- such as renting a vehicle,
rebooking a flight or making other arrangements -- costs much more. If
notifications were more immediate, a lot of trouble and frustration
could be avoided, Peranteaux said. He added that he has experienced that
scenario and suggested adding that concern to the letter.
"You'd
think that in this age of technology with fairly instant communication,
a system can be implemented that can address that fairly easily,
inexpensively," he said. "That's truly the mismanagement portion and
it's truly detrimental to the smaller communities."
Landing log
Griffin
also provided the board with a report showing the types of aircraft
that land at the Riverton Regional Airport. Under the general aviation
category were local aircraft, in-transit aircraft passing through the
region, multi-engine aircraft or twin engine aircraft (which can include
life flight and local aircraft), small corporate jets, and life flight
and search and rescue helicopters.
From January to October,
roughly 3,100 of those aircraft landed at the airport. Under the
military category, only five military aircraft had been counted, all in
January 2013.
Around the state
The Wyoming Department of
Transportation Aeronautics Division also presented its set of statistics
for commercial air service for the state.
As of September,
roughly 858,000 passengers had passed through Wyoming's airports,
roughly 43,000, or 5.3 percent, more than the same time in the previous
year.
Laramie Regional Airport saw the greatest increase.
Riverton Regional Airport had a 3 percent growth while airports in
Worland, Rock Springs, Gillette and Cheyenne showed no gain. The Jackson
Hole Airport had the most passengers, with a 6 percent increase in
enplanements.
Story: http://dailyranger.com