City sticks with Great Lakes for flights

After much consternation over the future of Clovis' airport service, the Clovis city commission upheld a lower board decision to stay with Great Lakes Airlines and move its federally-subsidized Essential Airlines Service flights to Denver.

The proposal was accepted on a 4-3 vote. Voting in the affirmative were Commissioners Juan Garza, Dan Stoddard, Len Vohs and Chris Bryant. Voting against were Commissioners Fidel Madrid, Sandra Taylor-Sawyer and Bobby Sandoval.

Great Lakes currently provides service from Clovis to Albuquerque Sunport, but served the city with an intent to drop the service due to a desire to leave Albuquerque.

That initiated a bid period for the EAS service, with two bidders — Great Lakes, offering a flight to Denver with a stop in Santa Fe, and Portland, Ore.-based SeaPort Airlines in what would have essentially resumed service from Clovis to Albuquerque.

Great Lakes' proposal is two round trips between Clovis to Denver International Airport, using Beechcraft 1900D aircraft. Great Lakes has a presence in DIA's "A" concourse with several other carriers. The flights would include a stop in Santa Fe, where passengers could deplane or undergo security screening prior to continuing the trip to DIA.

The average roundtrip fare would be $144.97 per ticket.

SeaPort proposed 18 weekly round trips between Clovis and Albuquerque using a Cessna Caravan, with an average fare between $92 and $103 and an introductory $49 price in the first 30 days of service. However, the commission did not have that option, as SeaPort required both Clovis and Silver City as clients to make the proposal work; Silver City stuck with Great Lakes.

The city's Civil Aviation Board on Tuesday recommended Great Lakes on a 5-1 vote. Tom Phelps, a member of the board, said it came down to offering more than 170 connections at DIA, compared to about 20 at Albuqerque, despite obvious in-state appeals.

"Albuquerque is not the way to go," Phelps said. "We haven't seen the ridership or the enplanements."

Great Lakes projects 7,500 passengers annually to Denver; it projected about one-third of that to Albuquerque, and had 2,203 passengers from August 2011 to July 2012.

Butch Hamer, a Clovis-based employee of Great Lakes, said the company has wonderful Clovis-to-Albuquerque customers, and he hates the thought of losing them. But, he said, it is a business decision to put more people in planes and get Great Lakes to a place where it has backup aircraft — an option it does not have in Albuquerque.

Sandoval said he understood why Great Lakes would make a business decision to leave Albuqerque, but his role as a commissioner was to look out for constituents that needed air travel to and from Albuquerque. He noted many eye doctors that serve both cities depend on the flights to serve their customers.

Judy McDaniel of Clovis said she has taken the EAS flights through different providers for about nine years to see specialty doctors in Albuquerque.

"It's the only way I'm getting to Albuquerque," McDaniel said. "I can't drive that far, and I don't have anyone to drive me there."

Madrid said he had issues with Great Lakes as a provider when his son needed to get to Phoenix. A flight to Albuquerque, and a connecting flight to Phoenix were booked. But they got to the airport and were told the flight was canceled, and they had to drive to Phoenix instead, because the cancellation left him no chance to make his connecting flight. He also wasn't sold on re-upping with Great Lakes, noting that the entire reason for the new bid process was that Great Lakes had just terminated the service it said it would provide to Clovis.

Taylor-Sawyer said that she was a frequent flier with Great Lakes and has always been informed in advance of potential flight cancellations. She would be fine with a move to Santa Fe personally, since she could always get a rental car or ride the Railrunner, but she had concern for residents like McDaniel who could not for whatever reason.

Commissioners who voted for the proposal noted that the city does have the right to terminate the contract with 90 days of notice and start another bid process, just as Great Lakes did.

Airport Director Gene Beiker told commissioners the board has been very persistent about lining up future service to Dallas-Fort Worth International, but no carriers bid to provide that service. During board meetings, he and others asked officials with both Great Lakes and SeaPort about a DFW possibility, and were told it was unlikely but that all things were possible.

The recommendation must be forwarded to the Department of Transportation by Wednesday. The date of service changes are pending DOT action.