City Council needs to forget about commercial air service in Salem

Wow. Travel Salem and other Chamber of Commerce types really have memory problems.

It's only been a few weeks since Avelo Airlines announced it is pulling out of the Salem Airport as of August 10 after just a couple of years of sucking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of subsidies provided to the airline, along with benefiting from $2.4 million in airport improvements that came out of the same general fund that city officials claim is going broke, which is why voters were asked to approve a property tax increase to fund city services, which they did.

Yet even before Avelo Airlines has slunk out of town for even greener (as in more money) pastures, there are calls from Charlie Brown wanna-be's to pump even more tax dollars into attracting a different airline to Salem — even though there's precisely zero evidence that a new airline wouldn't do what others have done in the past: take the money, then disappear.

(Whenever I use the Charlie Brown metaphor, I feel the need to explain to younger folks that if you aren't familiar with it, every fall Lucy promises that she'll put her finger on the ball so Charlie Brown can kick it, and every fall Lucy pulls the ball away just as Charlie Brown thinks this time she won't do it.)

I was astounded to read a July 29 Salem Reporter story by Joe Siess, "Travel Salem working with new airline with hopes of resuming commercial air service." The cluelessness of Travel Salem shows that they have very little understanding of either local politics or how the airline business works.

Here's how the story starts out:

Travel Salem told city councilors Monday it is in talks with an unnamed commercial airline that could potentially pick up commercial air service after Avelo Airlines leaves town next month. 

Avelo announced on Monday, July 14, that it planned to stop flying out of Salem starting Aug. 10, after less than two years of operation. The news surprised city and business leaders who spent years, and millions of dollars, courting the commercial air service.

Days after the announcement two top airport officials including Airport Manager John Paskell submitted their letters of resignation. Neither gave a reason for their departure.

City councilors only briefly discussed Avelo’s departure toward the end of their meeting. The session gave little indication which direction councilors might lean about approving an agreement with a new airline and spending further city money to subsidize its operations.

Travel Salem CEO Angie Villery estimated it would take between $1 and $3 million to create a revenue guarantee similar to the one that subsidized Avelo. In Avelo’s case, that money came from a federal grant and private donations collected by Travel Salem, not city coffers.

If the Salem City Council were to authorize spending more taxpayer money on coaxing a different airline to come to the airport before it also would depart after a year or two, this would signal to voters that they were conned into approving the Livability Levy that city officials said was needed to prevent drastic cuts to the library, parks, and senior center.

Because if the City of Salem has enough money to keep on bribing airlines to provide commercial air service, this puts the lie to the claim that the city faces a serious ongoing general fund problem. Citizens would be justified in saying begone! at future elections to any member of the City Council, including the mayor, who voted to allocate additional tax revenue to subsidizing another airline.

It isn't as if commercial air travel is a fledgling industry that needs public money to get off the ground. There's a reason Salem has a lot of trouble attracting airlines: our city isn't attractive to airlines. We're just an hour or so away from the Portland International Airport, and also the Eugene Airport. Almost anywhere people want to fly isn't the sole place Avelo Airlines flew from Salem — Burbank, California. 

Of course, some of the people plugging to recruit a new airline even before the old airline has officially ceased service stand to make money from another instance of Lucy pulling the airline-shaped football away. The Salem Reporter story says:

Brent DeHart, the CEO of Salem Aviation Fueling and leader of the Fly Salem effort to recruit an airline, also spoke during public testimony on Monday. 

He told councilors and the public that having commercial air service brought an excellent return on investment for Salem over time. He urged the council to focus on building an incentive fund to attract a new carrier as soon as possible. 

Gosh, what a non-shock. The CEO of an airport fueling company is in favor of having more planes use the airport that he sells fuel at. The City Council needs to ignore anything Brent DeHart tells them, because he has an obvious economic interest in getting taxpayers to subsidize another airline. 

I also urge the City Council to be wary of the supposed $1.8 million a month that visitors to Salem who arrived by air spent here. That estimate came from a firm that specializes in studies aimed at bringing commercial air service to a city. I've never seen a description of the economic methodology used in coming up with the $1.8 million a month figure.

To be anywhere near valid, the methodology would need to ignore the many air travelers who live in the Salem area because they don't spend more here if they take a weekend trip to Disneyland. The methodology also would have to account for the many air travelers who visit friends or family in Salem and stay with them, rather than in a hotel. And ideally the methodology would account for the environmental cost of the additional airplane traffic, since air travel is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution.