Sandpoint gets commercial air service

SANDPOINT – Gary Ballew kissed his wife goodbye Monday morning. Then he walked about 50 feet across the Sandpoint Airport’s tarmac to board a nine-passenger airplane to Seattle.

There were no waits, no lines. In fact, Ballew was the only passenger aboard the Cessna Caravan.

Sandpoint’s first commercial air service kicked off Monday in decidedly laid-back fashion.

“Oh dear, they’re late for the first flight,” Adele Ballew said as the clock ticked two minutes past 9:15 a.m., the scheduled takeoff time. Her husband waved from the plane window. She waved back, and the Cessna streaked down the runway.

After years of community effort, regularly scheduled air service began in Sandpoint this week. McCall Aviation will fly between Sandpoint and Boise and Seattle’s Boeing Field on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Round-trip airfare costs about $262 to each destination.

“It’s exhilarating,” said Rich Faletto, vice chairman of the Sandpoint Air Service Committee, a citizens group. “This is one of the historic events in Sandpoint. I liken it to the opening of the Long Bridge in the transportation arena.”

The Long Bridge ended Sandpoint’s isolation by eliminating the boat ride across Lake Pend Oreille in the early 1900s, Faletto said. Sandpoint’s air service links the community to the state capital and the Northwest’s most populous area, he noted.

Community boosters have high hopes for the service. Regular flights will bring more tourists to Sandpoint, help sell vacation homes and make the area more attractive to new business, they believe. Though Ballew was the only passenger on Monday’s trip to Seattle, the afternoon flight from Sandpoint to Boise was full.

Ballew flies to Seattle twice a month for business. He expects to be a regular on McCall’s flights.

The no-frills flight to Boeing Field takes 1 1/2 hours. Neither peanuts nor drinks are served. The airline might add snacks at some point, but probably not drinks, said McCall President Dan Scott. The Cessna has no toilet.

Upfront, the ticket costs more than Horizon or Southwest’s $100 economy fare to Seattle. But the savings accrue in time and other costs for Ballew. He cuts out the 1 hour, 45 minute drive to the Spokane airport, and eliminates cab fees in Seattle because he can park a second car at Boeing Field.

“I’ve priced out the costs, and it comes very close,” he said.

Adele Ballew often drove her husband to Spokane to catch his flight. She’s keen to relinquish chauffer duties. “Hopefully, they’ll keep flying,” she said. “That’s what we’d like.”

Sandpoint residents prepurchased more than $200,000 in airline tickets to recruit McCall Air to their community.

The airline is definitely taking a business risk, said Mark Sixel, a consultant from Eugene, Ore., who worked with the Sandpoint air committee. Very few communities with a population of 7,000 have regular air service, according to Sixel, and those that do often receive subsidies from the federal government.

Sandpoint didn’t qualify for a government subsidy, typically given only to very remote communities. To help recruit an airline, the committee commissioned Sixel to study local flying habits. His firm found that residents of Bonner County, Bonners Ferry and western Montana make about 40,000 flights out of the Spokane airport each year.

Armed with the study, the committee began courting possible air carriers. McCall Aviation was one of three that responded to a request for proposals last fall.

The company began as a charter service to Idaho’s backcountry. Based on that experience, Scott knew that commercial air service to Sandpoint couldn’t survive solely on tourist traffic.

“North Idaho has a lot of off-season, about seven months of it,” Scott said. “But this isn’t only a resort community. There’s lots going on from the business community and government travel.”

Most of McCall’s June booking are business-related travel, he said. July and August are heavier on vacation traffic. By the end of September, Scott said, he’ll be able to judge the viability of air service to Sandpoint.

McCall Aviation has a yearlong agreement with Bonner County to provide passenger service to Sandpoint. The company can cancel with a 30-day notice, but then it forfeits payments from the presold tickets. The money is in an escrow account, and McCall Aviation will receive one-twelfth of it each month during the first year of operations.

Erin Maher hopes the airline is busy enough to add flights and bigger planes by the end of the year. “That’s what we’re all counting on,” said Maher, Hidden Lakes Golf Resort’s director of business development. “It’s critical to the emergence of this area as a four-season resort.”

Hidden Lakes and Schweitzer Mountain Resort are gearing up to advertise vacation packages that include air fare. Seattle is a large market for both. More than 300 Puget Sound residents already own second homes in Bonner County. Easy air access will help sell vacation condos to Seattle residents, and that, in turn, increases demand for flights, Maher said.

Air service is also critical to bringing new companies to Sandpoint, said Mark Williams, executive director of the Bonner County Economic Development Corp.

The EDC is currently trying to recruit a company from Seattle, Williams said. Company officials need access to other operations in the Puget Sound region and customers in Asia. They could drive to Spokane, but a nonstop flight from Sandpoint to Seattle is definitely a selling point, Williams said.

“It’s fundamental to any business that would want to locate here,” Faletto said. “They invariably ask, ‘Do you have air service?’ ”