Flying High ; The Portland International Jetport is Well-Positioned for Growth, Something City Officials Should Encourage in the Name of Prosperity.

When people in Southern Maine – and nearby parts of New Hampshire – want to fly somewhere by commercial air, they have three major choices: Portland, Manchester, N.H., and Boston’s Logan Airport.

Four out of 10 fliers pick the Portland International Jetport. Local transportation officials think that number is a decent but not ideal slice of the potential passenger pie, and they’re right.

So, they are making solid plans to cut a bigger slice for themselves in the coming decade, even as the pie expands due to regional growth.

That’s exactly what they need to be doing, because the jetport is a highly significant economic asset for all of southern Maine. Elected and appointed officials, along with local citizens, are well- served by this major transportation facility and should support current expansion efforts to the fullest.

The jetport, which sits in the center of the state’s most prosperous region, is a “terminus” airport. People begin or end their trips there, with few hopping from one flight to another.

Arrivals leave the terminal to go somewhere else by car or bus (or, someday, maybe even by train or cruise ship, when rail service expands and passenger vessels start picking up and dropping off passengers in Portland in a vastly expanded service that officials are now working to bring to town).

But that’s for the future. Right now, air service is a major economic driver, functioning like an airborne fishing rod reeling greenbacks out of the sky.

People looking to do business here see the availability of seats and the convenience of flight times and connections as significant reasons to create or expand an enterprise, or to do business with existing Maine firms.

Visitors, meanwhile, disperse to meet family or friends, or sample the state’s forests, beaches, parks, rivers and mountains.

Thus, it’s not just the dollars spent on tickets that count. The cash and credit cards passengers bring in their wallets and purses mean much more to Portland and the many other communities and businesses the jetport serves.

GROWTH IS COMING

Based on measures of passenger growth, affordable service and ever-growing revenues, the jetport is doing its pump-priming job very well – and will likely be able to expand it.

A recent memo to the City Council from Portland’s port and transportation director, Jeff Monroe, made clear that the issues that will keep the jetport’s managers occupied for the coming decade all revolve around how to manage growth.

Those are the best kind of problems to have for a money-making operation, which the jetport certainly is.

It put $1 million in profits in its coffers last year. Annual profit goes into a fund that now tops $12 million, all of it available for new facilities and services.

New England has 11 commercial airports, and Portland is the fastest-growing among the biggest five, which also include Boston, Manchester, Hartford and Providence.

But the past is only prologue, according to local officials. Monroe says Portland captures only about 40 percent of its potential passenger base (local officials say its “catchment area” comes from the 350,000 people living within a 45-mile radius of the airport).

Boston’s Logan Airport captures 41 percent of the airline customers in that group, and the Manchester airport (recently renamed Manchester-Boston Regional Airport as a marketing tool) gets 17 percent.

While some have suggested that the Brunswick Naval Air Station, with its 8,000-foot runways, could become a new commercial airport in the region – and competition for Portland – transportation experts disagree. They cite its distance from major cities and lack of infrastructure as major obstacles to passenger service. The panel studying new uses for BNAS after the Navy abandons it in 2010 is not including such service among its options, although other aviation uses could make good sense.

Portland officials believe they have a unique opportunity to attract more regional travelers using new marketing tools, including increased advertising for the jetport and its services.

While the jetport built its base business on the so-called “legacy” airlines – full-service, full-price carriers that now include Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and U.S. Airways – it’s the sexy discount providers that offer the sizzle that helps sell much more of the steak: seats on planes.

Manchester, after all, established its recent growth by offering flights on Southwest Airlines, one of discount aviation’s pioneers and perhaps its biggest success story. Besides offering low-cost fares themselves, discount carriers pressure other airlines serving the same airport or even region to cut prices, at least on competing routes or to major hubs.

But with service to New Hampshire, Southwest wasn’t interested in Portland, and probably never will be. What to do? Find another carrier to fill the same market niche.

So the jetport brought in a smaller carrier, Independence Air. While the idea was fine, the choice wasn’t, and the airline soon went belly-up from internal causes, even though Portland was a profit center for it.

Finding a replacement wasn’t just a matter of searching the Internet under “discount airlines.” Wooing a new passenger service, it turns out, is like any business deal: It takes time and resources to gather data and present a solid case to a potential partner.

INTO THE BLUE

But Portland was given a strong selling point by Independence’s good boarding figures at the jetport. So, officials put on a full- court press for the next prospect on the list, attracting the rapidly expanding JetBlue, with its major hub at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Getting there in a single low- cost hop opened the way for travel anywhere in the United States or overseas.

Though public confidence in the airline fell steeply after its poor performance during a major winter storm last February, it has since rebounded.

And now, Portland has welcomed another discount carrier, AirTran, which commenced three daily flights from Portland to Baltimore- Washington International Airport on June 6, along with a seasonal weekly nonstop flight to Orlando, planning to end them on Nov. 6.

Less than a month later, AirTran reported that its business in Portland “has far exceeded our expections.”

So it boosted its Florida service from a single Saturday flight to a daily one, and said it would be offering that service year- round. It also extended its commitment for flights to BWI from Nov. 6 to Jan. 7, with a restart planned later in 2008.

AirTran service only accelerated the drop in fares from the other airlines serving Portland. For the legacy airlines, such price cuts let them maintain passenger share, which in the case of Portland means slicing into a bigger pie over time.

Air travel jumped about 30 percent during the first four months of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006, and passenger totals have broken monthly records in seven of the past nine months.

Though the chart accompanying this editorial appears to indicate that passenger arrivals and departures are lagging behind previous years, the 2007 total for January to May doesn’t take the new AirTran flights and seasonal variations into account.

The new airlines won’t eliminate some of Boston’s advantages. Logan will always have more airlines flying to more cities at more convenient times of day for many potential passengers, and the volume of flights means that at least some will offer competitively low-cost fares. Manchester, too, will offer services and fares to certain destinations that Portland can’t match.

But that’s not the main point for local officials, who now are at least competing on the same terms as other airports. Before AirTran arrived, Portland offered service to 14 major hub airports, and adding BWI and Orlando made the total 16.

NOT KICKING BACK

Portland isn’t kicking back when it comes to planning for the future. As Monroe notes, “The competition between airports for new service is intense, and it takes stronger financial commitments from airports to attract airlines.”

Those commitments can sometimes take the form of subsidies for service, but often they revolve around facilities that are robust enough to meet demand.

Parking is an important part of that picture, and the jetport has had a long-term effort to expand its available slots for cars. Because existing parking is often filled to capacity, the airport has had to resort to off-site parking for most of this year.

In May, it announced plans to spend $36.1 million to tear down a current two-level, 570-space parking garage built in 1978 and build a five-level, 1,039-space facility that would connect to a 1,142- space garage that was constructed in 2002.

The expansion is based on projections that the jetport’s local passenger boardings will climb an average of 3.6 percent per year through 2015, rising from 680,450 last year to 937,000 eight years down the road.

But there’s an even more critical facility issue: space for the airplanes themselves.

An airport’s ability to offer flights is directly affected by how many gates it can access and how often they can be used during a given time period.

Airlines buy time and space at gates, and if availability is limited, so is the airport’s opportunity to expand its service with new airlines or accommodate additional flights for its present carriers.

And Portland is maxed out. It has 11 gates, eight of which are served by “jetways” – the covered mobile walkways that protect passengers from the weather – and they’re fully occupied.

“We are at maximum capacity regarding space and, to grow, we will need to expand our terminal. With seven months of strong growth (20 percent-plus), and in fact the strongest growth of all the five major New England airports, the need for this expansion is drawing rapidly closer. That, coupled with the new garage, should meet customer needs for the foreseeable future,” Monroe wrote.

That is, it’s just as important to have parking space for planes as it is for cars. That’s where terminal expansion comes in.

Jetport planners are firm believers in the “if-you-build-it-they- will-come” philosophy, and are discussing an expansion next year that will connect to the new garage and provide space for three to five more jetways, including a new passenger security screening area, that could allow dozens of flights to be added.

NEW CARRIERS, NEW POSSIBILITIES

Who will add those flights? Besides the jetport’s current carriers, planners hope that another U.S. airline, perhaps American Airlines, which used to serve the jetport, might be interested in coming here at some future date.

But there are also active discussions going on with Canadian cities about what it would take to put the “International” back into the facility’s name in a meaningful sense, with either service from a major carrier like Air Canada or a smaller regional carrier. It’s also possible a U.S. carrier could use Portland as an intermediate stop for a new route into the Maritime Provinces or to Montreal.

The most-probable destinations from Portland would be some combination of service to Toronto or Montreal, with Saint John, New Brunswick, or Halifax, Nova Scotia, also on the list. The strongest potential is likely found with Toronto, where many locals do business and where many alternate routes to other destinations north of the border open up.

One part of the jetport that can’t grow very much is its runways. One is 7,200 feet long, and the other is 5,000. Though there are plans to improve the latter somewhat, the jetport, hemmed in by homes on one side, industries on another, the Maine Turnpike on a third flank and the Fore River on the fourth, is never going to be able to build a runway long enough for a 747.

But it can easily handle small- and mid-range jets, and what local officials have seen is that an airline will begin its service with smaller jets in the 50- to 70-passenger range offering four or five flights. As they fill up, they are replaced by planes that can carry up to 170 passengers that can do the job with fewer takeoffs and landings, which saves the airlines some expenses.

Airport use by general aviation – pleasure and business planes – isn’t expected to grow as much as passenger service, but it should remain solid, and officials are seeking a second “fixed-base operator” to provide fuel, maintenance and hangar services.

MONEY NOT AN ISSUE

Where will the money come from for this expansion? Parking expansion is paid for with bonds financed by airport revenues. Terminal expansions come from the Passenger Facility Charge, with $12 added to each ticket. And runway improvements come from federal funds.

So, with solid funding sources in place, there seem to be few obstacles to the airport’s continued growth in infrastructure, service capacity and variety of carriers and flights.

In some ways, the jetport’s geographic restrictions have insulated it from impinging greatly on its neighbors, preventing the expansions and property condemnations that have created controversies in other cities. Though noise has been a problem, newer jets are quieter, and local officials actively track and communicate with those few pilots who are prone to saving time by avoiding recommended noise-reduction routes.

All that leaves Portland and its airport in a position to provide a higher level of attractively priced service over the coming decade.

That will support growth that will aid the economy not only of one city, but of an entire region.

[Sidebar]

TOTAL PASSENGERS

The Portland International Jetport has seen passenger loads grow over time. In 2007, it is on track for a record number of arrivals and departures.

2003 1,251,972

2004 1,365,078

2005 1,454,027

2006 1,408,537

*2007 570,063

*January to May

(c) 2007 Portland Press Herald. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.