County’s airport struggles to stay airborne

Commissioners to provide $45,000 in emergency funding

By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com

JEFFERSON — If you pay sales or property taxes in Ashtabula County, you indirectly invest in the Ashtabula County Airport, although chances are you’ll never use it.

Commissioners last week met with members of the Airport Authority and agreed to provide $45,000 in emergency funding to bring the airport authority current on its obligations. Commissioners are also committed to providing monthly injections of cash, estimated at $2,000 to $12,000 monthly, or about $100,000 total for the year.

So what will the taxpayer get for his or her money?

Ashtabula County Commissioner Joseph Moroski said there is a common perception that the airport is rich man’s infrastructure. Very, very few of us own an airplane or helicopter — there are only 65 registered aircraft in the county— and some of those use farm fields. Most taxpayers would prefer their money go to repair the county’s potholed, bumpy roads rather than provide a smooth landing for corporate jets. Nevertheless, just as our highways accommodate semi-tractors, vacationers and folks beating paths to their jobs, the airport serves various classes of air travelers and segments of our economy.

Dave Price, president of the airport authority and its contract airport manager, says traffic at the airport breaks down into three categories:

1) Corporate/ business — Last Wednesday morning, Save-A-Lot’s corporate jet brought company executives to Ashtabula County to check on operations at the Austinburg warehouse. Price said when the distribution center was being built and set up, the airport frequently hosted the jet. Now, it is down to about one visit a year.

Having an airport near existing or proposed business locations can be a factor in retaining or attracting industry to the county, say county commissioners and authority members. Delta Railroad Construction and MFG both have hangars at the airport, as do two area businessmen. The airport’s customers include Plastpro, Worthington Industries, Pressrite, Flying J and Ken Forging.

2) Travelers. Some people, Price included, use their aircraft for travel just like the rest of us drive cars and trucks. These aircraft are often owned by several family members or friends. Price estimates the number of users who fall in that category and have planes stored at the airport to be around a dozen.

Occasionally, the airport will host an aircraft making a cross-country trip. Last week, a jet destined for San Francisco used the airport to refuel. The 1,075-gallon sale was welcome but rare. “That’s the third time that’s happened since 1998,” Price says.

3) Hobbyists. These are the aircraft owners who simply enjoy flying and tinkering around with airplanes. Price compares them to the boat owners who rent space at the area marinas and use their craft for weekend recreation.

He says the airport’s runway is actually much longer than what most of these users need. Overall, this is the less-profitable segment of the market because these users are extremely sensitive to any increase in hangar fees or fuel prices.

Kettunen Aeronautical, which provides maintenance service, flight training, rental aircraft and private pilot services, is also located at the airport. The authority’s income stream from Kettunen comes through hangar rental.

The airport itself has just two employees, Betty Cochran and Bryan Burkey, who juggle their schedules to provide staffing from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week. Cochran and Burkey accommodate traffic after those hours with advance notice.

There is no air traffic control at the airport. Flight movement is handled from Federal Aviation Administration facilities at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna Township.

Surprisingly, the airport does not figure into the county’s disaster planning process. Air support during a disaster would come through the Cleveland or Youngstown facilities. That said, the airport occasionally supports medevac and U.S. Coast Guard aircraft that need fuel or a landing strip while conducting operations in the area.

Country airport

Located in rural Denmark Township, the airport sprawls over 620 acres acquired in the 1960s using a variety of county, state and federal moneys. Price says an ongoing challenge for the airport is to keep much of this land from becoming wetlands, and to that end, 180 acres of it is farmed and planted in soybeans. The airport does not receive cash from the farmer who works the land but does receive in-kind services of land clearing. Price said if the land were not farmed, the authority would have to expend money and time caring for it.

Eighty acres are in grass and require mowing. About $4,000 is budgeted for diesel fuel to run the mowing and snow-removal equipment at the airport.

The facility opened in 1967 with a 4,200-foot runway, which was lengthened to 5,200 feet in 1991. The runway is 100 feet wide, large enough to accommodate corporate jets as large as a Gulfstream 4. Price says there’s a rumor that a modified Boeing 727 used the airport more than 20 years ago.

Maintaining this 10-inch-thick asphalt strip is expensive. The runway is at the end of its service life, and four years ago the authority embarked on a program to rebuild the surface completely. The FAA funded an $800,000 project to drain the west side of the runway. The authority’s match, 5 percent, came from local foundations.

“The leverage is huge on these grants,” Price says.

The authority wants to do the same work on the east end of the runway, as well as create safety areas 400 feet wide and 1,000 feet long on the east and west ends, and on either side. The project would involve wetlands mitigation. The authority is looking toward FAA and other federal funding for the bulk of the money.

“We got about $5.5 million in capital improvement projects planned for the next 10 years,” Price say. “All this depends on funding from Congress.”

Price says maintaining the airport infrastructure is essential to safety and attracting traffic. One of the ongoing issues is maintaining a favorable descent height for pilots by keeping trees around the runways trimmed. If pilots find it difficult/ hazardous to land there, they’ll pass up the airport for another facility, thus depriving the operation of ramp charges/ fuel income.

Income streams

The airport has two major sources of income: hangar rental/ ramp fees and fuel sales.

Hangars, the buildings where the aircraft are stored and maintained, dot the airport landscape. The main building dates to 1967 and houses airport offices, as well.

The airport has two older open-style hangars plus a trio of privately owned hangars. In 2004, the authority embarked on a $1.4 million hangar construction project to address a shortage of modern insulated space. One of the hangars is geared toward larger corporate aircraft; the other two provide space for smaller planes. Each building is about 10,000 square feet and provides secure storage.

The airport has 42 planes on site. Betty Cochran says determining hangar capacity is difficult because it all depends on the size of the aircraft accommodated, but she estimates the airport has between 15 and 24 spaces available. That wasn’t the case when the authority decided to build additional hangar space.

“At the time, (all the airports hangars) were filled,” Price says. “We were like a retail business without inventory to sell.”

The 30-year hangar financing costs the authority about $90,000 annually, which includes a reserve requirement. Price says the new hangars are less than 50 percent occupied. Price points to the recession and competition from surrounding airports as reasons for the lack of interest in this space.

Nevertheless, he feels the county’s airport is poised to grow once the economy improves. And if Burke Lakefront or any of the other airports on the east side of Cleveland were to close, it could bring an influx of aircraft owners to the county.

“If it were not for the recession we’re in, we would be seeing a migration (of aircraft) from the east side,” he said. “We are ready for those people to come to us.”

In 2009 the airport authority expects to raise $88,593 in hangar fees and another $3,254 in ramp/ handling fees.

In addition to renting hangar pace, the airport generates operating revenue by selling fuel. In 2009 those sales are expected to generate $60,000 in revenue. As with hangar rental, the recession is taking its toll – hobbyists and travelers are flying less and using fewer gallons of fuel.

The most lucrative segment of this market is the commercial user. Price says they are less likely to be sensitive to fuel costs and will purchase fuel at the airport rather than spend the time shopping for cheaper energy at another strip. They also buy larger quantities; the Save-A-Lot jet took on 300 gallons during its recent visit.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing the county can do to attract more corporate traffic to the airport aside from maintaining a safe, pilot-friendly airstrip. Otherwise, it’s a chicken-or-the-egg issue — the county must have an airport to generate interest from new industry, and it must have industry’s jobs and taxes to help support the airport.

Price says hobbyists and travelers are much more likely to take their craft to other locations where the fuel is cheaper and relocate them to lesser-priced hangars. The authority raised rent this year, but at the same time offered incentives to those who committed to long-term hangar rental. Still, Price says they have lost hobbyists to airports with less-expensive hangar rent, which has contributed to the operation’s financial woes this year.

Financial problems are nothing new for the airport, however.

A 1997 report on the airport prepared by the county’s Department of Planning and Community Services noted that “Despite various revenue sources and seemingly increasing revenues, the County Airport Authority has nevertheless found itself challenged on several occasions to fulfill basic financial commitments. Consequently, the County Airport Authority has conveyed to the Board of County Commissioner a request that the County begin to provide outright financial support, in various forms, for ongoing operations of the County Airport.”

Price counts at least five attempts at putting airport operations in the hands of private companies, and all of them have failed. On one occasion, the effort was such a frustrating challenge the operator quit without notice. Most recently, Lakeside Aviation gave up in October 2007, leaving the day-to-day operation in the authority’s hands.

The operation lost $109,501 in 2008, actually less than projected thanks to $15,000 from a gas lease and $50,000 from a settlement with Lakeside Aviation. Over the years, the airport has benefited from the support of the Robert S. Morrison Foundation, the field’s namesake benefactor. The Androse Foundation made a gift to the airport in 2008.

Even with this support, the airport struggles to stay open.

“The history is that it’s really hard to make money at it,” Price says.

In a presentation to county commissioners, the authority pointed out that the airport would need to triple jet fuel sales and quadruple aviation gasoline sales, plus increase hangar rents 200 percent to eliminate the deficit. The authority’s conclusion was that there is “no reasonable expectation that some combination of these increases could occur in the current economic environment.”

Dwight Bowden, vice president of the authority, says general aviation across the country has taken a big hit from the recession. For this year, the board is projecting a loss of $81,200, despite cost-cutting measures that included freezing compensation and passing health-care insurance increases onto the employees.

In light of the mounting deficit, the authority last month voted to close the airport at the end of June. That resolution still stands, but there is a meeting June 29 at which the authority will review its financial picture after County Administrator Janet Discher and the airport board’s secretary/treasurer Betty Johns report on their efforts to bring the authority current on its obligations.

Bowden says the board wants to keep the airport open, and commissioners point out that closing it would not erase the financial obligations associated with it, including the $90,000 hangar loan payment due in October.

It is one more check that will have to be written from a shrinking county general fund.

In the eyes of the commissioners, it’s an investment in the county’s future.

“I think when you look at the airport for what it really is, it’s an economic development tool,” says Moroski, who serves as the commissioners representative to the authority. “When you look at the number of people of have used it -- from Plastpro and Save-A-Lot to MFG -- it is in everybody’s best interest for this county to have it available. ... When we come out of this economic recession, this is going to be one of the things we are going to need, I believe.”

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