Airport Manager Michael Hall
The Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport is not doing well. To anyone who paid attention through the last budget season, this is not news.
It's also not news to anyone who attended the March 24 meetings of the Tompkins County Legislature's Government Operations Committee.
After the committee approved two resolutions moving forward funding for the airport roof repair project, Airport Manager Michael Hall gave an update on the airport and its struggle with a decreasing number of customers.
Hall began by noting that enplanements are down 25 percent since 2010. He added, “That trend is regional. It’s not unique to Ithaca at all; Binghamton and Elmira are down by comparable amounts.” Hall presented a graph showing that, after years of steady increases, enplanements started going down in 2010.
One of the problems that could be causing this downward trend is the lack of service reliability. Hall explained, “Part of that is because two of the three destinations are in the northeast corridor – Philly and Newark are two of the more difficult airports in the country.” The Philadelphia and Newark hubs, Hall said, are “filling up” and in ten years those hubs might not have room for flights from Ithaca. Because it is more profitable for airports to focus on larger flights, small planes from smaller airports could get squeezed out. Hubs outside of the northeast -- such as the U.S. Airways hub in Charlotte, N.C. -- might be a better option in the long-run.
Hall said that the airport has met with professional consultants and with airline executives to discuss, among other things, the possibility of utilizing less-trafficked hubs outside of the northeast corridor.
Story and photo: http://www.ithaca.com
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