Airport Faces Challenge Financing Growth Spurt

During the past four years, Spokane and Colorado Springs have had two of the fastest-growing airports in the country.

But Michael Boyd says Spokane’s growth has “a much more fundamental base” than Colorado Springs.

“A good chunk of the Colorado Springs growth is because a bunch of morons built an airport in Denver that just doesn’t work very well,” says Boyd, president of Aviation Systems Research Corp. in Golden, Colo.

The new Denver airport is a high-cost facility. Boyd estimates that it costs airlines an average of $15 per passenger to fly in there.

Rather than face the additional costs, many passengers and carriers have chosen instead to fly into nearby Colorado Springs.

Even though Spokane’s growth hasn’t relied on something like the Denver factor, Spokane Airports Chief Executive Officer John Morrison says costs are still a critical factor in convincing air carriers to continue operating and expanding at any facility.

So keeping costs down for airlines is a major focus of the Spokane Airport Board, he says.

“Our cost to the carriers - what they call segment cost - is $3.21,” Morrison says. “That’s what it costs a carrier to run a passenger through Spokane International Airport.

“And there’s a big difference between $15 and $3.21.”

Five years ago, Morrison says, the airline companies provided 60 percent of Spokane International’s operating budget. Today, that figure is down to 38 percent.

“And,” he adds, “we think we are going to get it down to 25 percent within five years.”

Morrison is particularly proud of the airport’s ability to keep those costs down while the facility is in such a rapid-growth state.

Spokane’s airports, including Felts Field, are not funded by tax dollars. The funding comes from user fees charged to passengers, from the airline fees and from funds the airports generate through their own resources.

“We do it by finding ways to generate non-airline revenue,” Morrison says. The money comes from rents and leases paid by concessionaires and rental car companies and businesses for the use of airport property. And the airport board is expanding that resource.

The addition of a new roadway entering the airport this year will open 350 acres of airport property to development.

One new tenant, which Morrison would not identify pending closure of the deal, will build a building and employ 500 in three shifts.

Two other businesses will build one-story office buildings on the property to house their operations. The airport board will recruit a day-care operator to put in a 24-hour day-care facility to serve the growing employee base at the expanding airport facilities. A second airport hotel is being built. A gas station, car wash and “quick-lube” operation also will open. All that development will help fund capital expenditure projects that, over the next five years, will likely exceed the $41 million put into airport improvements since 1993 Morrison says.

Last week, the airport put the finishing touches on a 14,000-square-foot extension on the east end of the main terminal building to house rental car, courtesy van, taxi cab and limousine operations.

On the drawing boards is a similar extension at the opposite end of the terminal designed to expand counter space for airline ticketing and ground operations. Right now, if a new air carrier were to enter the market, it would have to contract with an existing carrier to use its desk facilities because there is no room.

Morrison believes Alaska and Horizon will move their operations into the new area, and the green concourse that now serves Horizon flights will be upgraded to handle Alaska’s full-size jets.

Nine of the airport’s existing passenger loading bridges on the two main concourses will be replaced this summer, Morrison says, and three of the old loading bridges will be moved to the green concourse area.

In another crucial improvement at the fog-plagued airport, Morrison says, the Federal Aviation Administration will complete installation of a new instrument landing system that will allow planes to land in conditions with as little as 700 feet visibility.

“Right now, the minimum is 1,700 feet,” Morrison says. “Our research indicates that if we had had the new system in operation during the past year, 90 percent of the flights that had to be delayed would have been able to land.”

The airport expanded its parking capacity in separate projects in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Some of that space was lost during last year’s ground transportation center construction as the project forced rental cars to the east end of the lot in front of the terminal.

Those spaces will be regained for public parking as the new rental car wing opens, but some spaces in the airport parking garage will be temporarily lost this year as repair and maintenance work is performed in that facility.

Airport officials hope that traffic flow around the terminal will be improved by this year’s road project.

A couplet will be placed in the area of the existing Spotted Road Intersection, routing traffic into the airport. The existing airport road will then be used exclusively to route traffic out. The result, airport officials say, will be four-lane access to and from the terminal.

Coping with the growth is an expensive process, but one that Morrison says the airport board is determined to maintain.

“One of the things we’re proudest of,” says Morrison, “is that the airport board has been able to structure this entity so it operates on non-tax dollars. We’ve found some innovative ways to spend less money for maximum benefit.

“If you don’t do that in today’s business, you are not going to survive.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Graphics: 1. Construction expenditures 2. Airport drive development area