Lebanon Airport Faces Scrutiny

(Ambient sound—A small jet lands; fade under voice as radio transmission crackles)

A Cessna jet touches down at Lebanon Municipal Airport on a cold, crackly winter morning.

Its passengers might be headed to one of many Upper Valley industries.

Or its cargo bay could be carrying medicine for the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

Either way, Airport operations manager Jay Fitzgerald likes to say that the airport provides Upper Valley businesses with a gateway to the world.

Fitzgerald – They have the capability to go from Lebanon to where they need to do their business and they can live in the beautiful valley that we have here.

An icy wind slices across the two runways that sit overlooking that Connecticut River valley.

And financial turbulence is causing city leaders to wonder whether the airport needs to tighten its belts.

Airport officials and members of the Airport Advisory Committee are going before the city council to explain why the airport lost $250,000 last year.

Fitzgerald says an operating deficit is not unusual among the 300 or so U.S. airports run by local governments.

Fitzgerald: They don’t break even. They’re funded by the local municipalities. Because the municipalities understand the importance of an economic engine that an airport is.

But Advisory Committee Chair Stephen Flanders has done some of his own research.

He thinks the Lebanon airport's deficit might be a little larger than the norm.

Flanders: The typical deficit of airports this size is around $50,000 a year.

Flanders and Fitzgerald point to several reasons for the drop.

Three airlines used to stop at the airport.

Now only Colgan Airlines does.

Flanders says industry restructuring over the past decade eliminated many shorter commuter routes.

And he blames Manchester Airport for taking much of Lebanon's traffic.

Flanders: Ten years ago we were quite worried about it and now our worst fears have pretty much materialized in terms of the robustness of airline service at Lebanon.

Lebanon law requires the airport to support itself.

But Flanders argues that the purse strings must be loosened to increase revenues.

Flanders: Conventional wisdom is that every dollar spent on an airport in a community brings back two to three dollars in terms of economic activity.

The city beefed up the airport’s budget to around $800,000 in 2006.

The city has also agreed to spend $1.2 million to build 20 new general aviation hangars this year.

But city councilors have stipulated that all hangars must be leased before ground is broken.

So far, just over half have been booked, but Flanders is confident the hangars will make money

He’s just not sure when.

Flanders: We anticipate that there might be a break-even in terms of financing the project within a year or at the most, within the worst-case situation, in seven years.

Thanks to a three-year, half million dollar federal grant, the airport has boosted the number of passengers served by 30%. up to 10 thousand a year.

And the airport has received the first installment of a four-year multi-million dollar grant to double the length of the airport’s taxiway.

That would allow larger planes to land.

In the meantime though, Airport officials must convince city leaders to stay the current expansion course.

For NHPR news, this is Kevin Forrest