Changing skyline

Big money isn’t rolling into Coeur d’Alene and Hayden.

It’s gliding in, touching down softly and comfortably in the pressurized cabins of Learjets, Gulfstreams, Citations and Hawkers.

North Idaho’s relative isolation and icy winter roads have long made flying the preferred option for local executives, but the last year or two has seen a dramatic increase in private jet traffic at the Coeur d’Alene Airport, said Gene Soper, a propeller plane pilot who has been based at the airport for 48 years.

“It’s the hot real estate market,” Soper said. “Those people aren’t coming to town on a Greyhound bus.”

Even so, the high-rolling seasonal residents of North Idaho need to drive and are partially responsible for the growing number of shiny new sport utility vehicles crowding Coeur d’Alene streets, Soper said.

“Some of them have Hummers as an airport courtesy car,” he said, laughing. “People have no conception of the amount of money that comes to Coeur d’Alene through the airport.”

On busy summer weekends, portions of the tarmac are parked wingtip-to-wingtip with private jets. Some belong to the new owners of lakefront homes, including the properties at Black Rock, a private golf community south of Coeur d’Alene, where houses start at $1.5 million, not including a $100,000 club membership initiation fee. The development company now keeps two private jets based at the airport and is in the process of building a private terminal for its residents, said Airport Manager Greg Delevan.

“A significant number of people who are buying come with their own planes,” he said, adding that he makes it a point not to pry. “We don’t have much contact with them. Even when we do, we don’t get into their business.”

The county-owned airport doesn’t have a tower, charges no landing fees and doesn’t keep detailed statistics on traffic, but Delevan said the facility handles about 140,000 takeoffs and landings each year – that’s up about 15 percent from a decade ago. The growth might not seem dramatic, Delevan said, but a large portion of the new planes are private jets.

At least 15 corporate jets are also based at the airport, including the Gulfstream that carries Coeur d’Alene real estate tycoon Duane Hagadone. Airport regulars say the jet has been used in recent months to fly in potential buyers for Hagadone’s $120 million luxury condominium project under construction at his golf course. Once at the airport, the potential buyers don’t even have to bother with those annoying traffic lights on U.S. Highway 95. They are flown the final 10 miles to the lakeside condo site in Hagadone’s Bell 430 executive helicopter.

Former professional football star John Elway is also reportedly a member of the airport’s private jet set (he comes here to golf). John Travolta has been spotted on the tarmac at the controls of his own Gulfstream. Local pilots say the runway would be long enough to handle Travolta’s other airplane, a 707, but he might have trouble turning around the jet after it lands.

Coeur d’Alene car dealership owner Tom Addis has kept a private jet at the airport for 15 years. Addis said his Cessna Citation flies between 20 and 30 hours each month. Commercial airlines often require two hours for parking, check-in and security screens. Addis can go from parking lot to flight in as little as six minutes. The jet and the airport have been invaluable tools for conducting business, Addis said.

“It just makes everything so much easier,” he said. “You don’t have the baggage hassles, you don’t have the security hassles, any of those things.”

The airport also is attracting a growing number of corporate aircraft previously based in Spokane, said John Adams, a Coeur d’Alene businessman who chairs the county’s airport advisory committee. “The skies are kind of crowded over there,” Adams said. “They’re mixing with heavy commercial, plus the military out of Fairchild. This makes our airport attractive.”

Three new hangars are under construction at the Coeur d’Alene Airport, with at least a dozen more in the works. No commercial flights come to Coeur d’Alene, but at least one carrier has expressed interest in starting a regular route linking Coeur d’Alene to Boise, Salt Lake City and Seattle. With commercial aviation in the financial doldrums, that probably won’t happen anytime soon, Adams said.

The big airlines might be sputtering, but business is booming for private jet charters, said Jay Burdeaux, who is in the process of opening an aviation fuel and maintenance center at the Coeur d’Alene Airport. Burdeaux recently sold his volcano flight tour business in Hawaii and gave up a career of flying large commercial jets to start up the fixed operations base here.

“9/11 had a tremendous impact on corporate travel,” Burdeaux explained on a recent afternoon at his hangar. “Who wants to show up and wait three hours in security?”

Fractional ownership of private jets has been one of the biggest growth areas, he said. Companies like Flexjet and Net Jets sell shares in high-end aircraft. For a mere $527,875, a person is allowed 50 hours per year in a six-passenger Learjet. This doesn’t include the $6,030 monthly management fee, however, or the $1,565 hourly rate, according to figures listed on Flexjet’s Web site.

Copies of Elite Traveler magazine sit on the new furniture in the pilot lounge at Burdeaux’s business, Northern Sky Air Center. When the center opens in the spring, it will also have a shower, cable television and a free shuttle car for pilots, who have a choice between two private flight centers at the airport.

“The rich people just get in a car and drive away; it’s the pilots you have to cater to,” Burdeaux said. As he spoke, a phone rang in the lounge. The caller asked Burdeaux about chartering a plane to scout potential investment property.

On busy summer weekends, 30 private jets at a time have been parked on the tarmac at the airport. On Tuesday, only three private jets were parked outside of hangars. One was a Learjet registered to a corporation based in Las Vegas, according to records from an Internet database of airplane tail numbers. Another was a jointly owned Cessna Citation jet based in La Quinta, Calif. The third was owned by a gas company in Oklahoma.

Airport manager Delevan said many of the private jets that whisk seasonal residents and golfers to Coeur d’Alene are currently parked in sunny Palm Springs, Calif. Traffic here should be picking up next week, though, Delevan said. “We’ll have a lot of them coming home for Christmas.”