City keeps hope for air service afloat
On-demand flights one possibility

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — With just over one month before the U.S. Transportation Department's deadline for air service grant applications arrives, and still no airline interested in serving Gallup, city officials say they're willing to try just about anything right now.

They've been searching for a new commercial air service provider since Westward Airways suspended all its flights in and out of Gallup last July just months after they began, claiming the two-year, $2.6 million deal which included Taos did not cover its expenses. The Nebraska-based company went out of business shortly afterward.

City Attorney George Kozeliski, the man spearheading Gallup's efforts to regain air service, said the city was ready to try anything from the type of scheduled service it had most recently if briefly to chartered service.

There's another option they're considering, one that's been building momentum in other parts of the country in recent years: On-demand service.

As City Manager Eric Honeyfield explained it, on-demand service falls somewhere between regular, scheduled flights and chartered flights. The last few companies the city contracted with had to make each point on their routes on a fixed schedule whether they had any passengers to pick up or drop off. Chartered services fly only as they're booked.

With on-demand service, the airline would have to be prepared to fly on certain, agreed upon days of the week, but only make the trip if there's either someone ready to pick up at either end of the route.

Every airline that's served Gallup has struggled. Without the need to make empty round trips, Honeyfield said, "it's much more efficient from an airline's point of view.

"There's a much better chance of getting the plane more than half full," he added.

That kind of flexibility, Kozeliski said, gives the city a better chance of attracting an interested airline. On the other hand, prospective passengers would probably have to buy their tickets a few days in advance.

Even if on-demand service makes each flight a little more crowded, the city will need the state and federal government's help.

"No one believes for a minute that (any airline that comes to Gallup) could survive on ticket sales alone," said Honeyfield.

If the city wants commercial air service to return any time soon, it will need to have its grant application in to the U.S. Transportation Department by April 7. But before it can submit its application, the city has to have an interested airline line up.

So far, Kozeliski said, the city hasn't found one.

Missing this year's deadline does not spell the end for Gallup. Assuming Congress reapproves the grant program that makes the federal subsidy possible, as it's been doing, the city can give it another shot in 2007.