May 18—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Six weeks after it appeared they might have to scramble to find a new carrier, John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport officials now have four proposals to consider.
And two of those competing proposals offer jet service.
In addition to SkyWest Airlines, which has served the area for the past 17 months, Tennessee-based Contour Airlines is seeking Johnstown's Essential Air Service contract by offering 12 weekly round trips to Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina.
SkyWest carries passengers on 50-seat jets under the United Airlines banner to two of the airlines' hubs — Washington-Dulles near Washington, D.C., and Chicago's O'Hare International.
Contour has an interline agreement with American Airlines and would carry passengers to one of its main hubs on 30-seat regional jets.
"With SkyWest providing their service for the past year-plus, they've proven the community can support jet service," Airport Manager Cory Cree said. "Our enplanement numbers are up, and I think both of those factors (were) motivators for other carriers to submit proposals."
The U.S. Department of Transportation sought proposals for Johnstown's airport after SkyWest initially informed the department that it needed to pull out of 29 communities where air service is subsidized by the federal Essential Air Service program, designed to ensure a minimal level of air service for communities that otherwise would be unprofitable to serve.
But the carrier has since approached a large number of those communities with proposals to continue serving them with additional "scheduling flexibility."
Johnstown airport officials have made retaining service with jet aircraft — rather than the smaller propeller planes the airport relied on for most of the past 15 years — a top priority, citing the improved passenger counts and reliability they've seen under SkyWest since 2021.
Johnstown airport officials have been negotiating with SkyWest to hammer out a deal that both sides would agree to — although the U.S. Department of Transportation has the final say.
But three of the four other proposals submitted to the federal department are also on the table, including Contour's, Cree said, noting that there has already been some dialogue with them.
The other two proposals are from carriers well-known to the Johnstown area.
San Francisco-based Boutique Air served the region until 2021 and still operates an airplane maintenance facility at Johnstown-Cambria County Airport.
Boutique carries passengers on single-propeller Pilatus PC-12 airplanes with up to nine seats. They are proposing 28 round trip flights weekly to either Washington-Dulles or Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
The company also has agreements with American Airlines that enable travelers to book flights connecting Boutique and American flights.
Southern Airways Express, another previous Johnstown area carrier, also carries passengers on eight- or nine-seat turboprop planes and proposes to offer service to Pittsburgh International Airport and Washington-Dulles. The airline listed proposals of 12 to 18 round-trip flights weekly, dependent on varying subsidy totals.
Proposals from the carriers range from $2.7 million in subsidies for Southern Airways Express' base offer to as high as $5.5 million for Contour.
One additional proposal was jettisoned, from a Philadelphia group marketing itself as Cool Air that proposed flights to Philadelphia and Washington-Dulles. Cree said federal officials informed the airport that the company was not federally authorized for consideration.
Regarding the remaining proposals, the Johnstown airport's enplanement committee plans to meet next week to begin discussing proposals with a goal of having a recommendation for the full authority before its June 21 monthly meeting.
The authority must issue a recommendation to the U.S. Department of Transportation by June 24, Cree said.
April passenger totals
SkyWest's April report shows the airline flew 1,162 people to and from Johnstown's airport last month — just under double the April 2021 total.
That included 617 enplanements — or departures — figures that federal officials use to determine the amount of funding airports receive.
That figure has continued to climb under SkyWest's watch — totaling 2,598 enplanements during the first four months of 2021 and 10,332 over the past 12 consecutive months. Both enplanement figures are the highest the airport has recorded in 15 years.
Airport authority members also discussed a plan that would have Peoples Natural Gas extend a 1,680-foot gas line to the airport's "East Side" hangars.
The move is eyed to encourage future development along one end of the airport as a Keystone Opportunity Zone — and the line could be developed at no cost to the authority, but Solicitor Tim Leventry noted that further dialogue needs to be conducted with Peoples to settle on a contract both sides can deliver on.
Leventry expressed concerns about the listed six-month completion window and gas usage totals in the contract, saying it's possible the authority could be liable if those expectations aren't met, as the contract proposal is currently written.
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