PORT ANGELES — A total of 10,183 passenger flights on Kenmore Air were logged out of William R. Fairchild International Airport in 2010.
That’s just 183 passenger flights more than the minimum number necessary to receive $1 million annually in aid from the Federal Aviation Administration to keep airline service between Port Angeles and Seattle.
The entitlement money is used for capital projects at the airport and necessary improvements, said Doug Sandau, airports and marinas manager for the Port of Port Angeles, which owns the airport in west Port Angeles.
Last year, port staff and commissioners worried whether the airport would pass the 10,000 threshold in passenger flights on Kenmore, which flies nine-passenger aircraft between Fairchild and Seattle’s Boeing Field, with ground shuttle service to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
If it hadn’t, there is a one-year grace period in which the passenger totals would have to be boosted, or the aid would be lost.
The money is given to airports with a regularly scheduled route in and out of the airport.
“The airport is holding their breath,” said port President George Schoenfeldt at a meeting Monday of the three port commissioners.
In 2010, Kenmore Air had 10,183 passengers take off from Port Angeles, and 9,036 passengers arrive.
That is a decrease from 2009’s figures, in which 24,513 people either took off or arrived.
In 2009, the numbers were greater because of the temporary closure of the Hood Canal Bridge for reconstruction of the floating bridge’s east end.
The port in cooperation with Kenmore Air in received a grant to hire Pat McCauley of Sequim’s InsideOut Solutions to act as a marketing consultant to boost ridership on the airline over the next two years.
