SRQ Angles for More Airlines

The (SRQ) last Friday filed a grant application with the Federal Aviation Administration to entice United Airlines here. United recently merged with Continental, giving it a boost in international connections.

Airport head Fred Piccolo said if the grant is approved, the new connections to SRQ could begin as soon as December. But there are hurdles, including recent congressional infighting.

The $800,000 grant would come from the Small Communities Air Service Development Program. It would be buttressed with $200,000 each from Sarasota and Manatee counties, significantly bolstering the application because it shows community support, Piccolo said. The two counties have already committed the money.

The airport will match the bi-county allocations, pushing the incentive to almost $1.5 million or more, because the airport could also waive landing fees and rents for a year. “If we are successful, we would bring another airline to the community,” Piccolo said.

“Continental has a huge international network,” said Virginia Haley, president of the Sarasota County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The Sarasota $200,000 contribution would come from a share of the Tourist Development Tax managed by her group for marketing.

“Plus they have a hub in Newark, New Jersey, so that brings additional flights from New York City as well as their main hub in Houston,” she said. “It’s now in the hands of the FAA.”

Unfortunately the FAA’s hands may be tied by a congressional imbroglio over funding. Parts of the agency were shut down the same day Piccolo filed the grant application. Four thousand FAA workers were furloughed when the House and Senate failed to agree on stop-gap funding. Democrats on Tuesday filed a bill to restore funding, but the Washington Post says the bill will “face serious head winds.”

Part of the controversy involved subsidized commercial air service to rural airports. Piccolo says the Small Communities Air Service Development Program “is in the same bundle of money.” 

“We have notified both United and Continental that we have applied for the grant,” Airport Authority Board Member Bob Waechter wrote Sarasota Patch in an email. “The other issue is whether the FAA will have the funding for the grant program if their funding is not approved by Congress.”

Fox News says, “An estimated 4,000 FAA workers have been furloughed, tens of thousands of airport construction workers are in limbo and at least $30 million a day in airline taxes are not being collected because of Republican objections to provisions they called wasteful and a Democratic reach-out to union supporters.“

“[T]his is a lose-lose situation,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday, speaking from the White House Rose Garden. One of the losers could be the Sarasota-Bradenton airport’s desire to lure United/Continental here.

Piccolo has long-scheduled plans to visit with United and Continental officials in Chicago, which he made before the grant application. He plans to lay out the incentives — should they still exist — before the corporate executives.