PORT ANGELES — Last spring’s six-week Hood Canal Bridge outage gave Kenmore Air an 11 percent increase in passenger load in 2009 compared with 2008.
Craig O’Neill, marketing and sales director for the airline, appearing before Port of Port Angeles commissioners to give a quarterly report Monday, said the alternative of flying Kenmore’s nine-passenger turboprop planes between Port Angeles and Seattle was preferable to driving around Hood Canal for many people.
“Probably without that, we would have been slightly down,” he said of the airline’s 2009 passenger load between the Port of Port Angeles’ William R. Fair child International Airport and Boeing Field.
“The fourth quarter was down about 3.9 percent, but the third quarter was down about 7 percent.
‘Bit of good news’
“We begin to see a bit of good news and take solace in the fact that our route in the San Juans is nearly identical.
“When markets like that line up, we begin to see that it is an overall market demand of flying,” O’Neill said.
“We wish it were higher, but we are more concerned when one route or another seems to be out of synch.”
O’Neill said airline officials hope the worst of the recession slump is behind them.
“I would be very, very surprised if at the end of this first quarter I’m not telling you about an uptick,” he said.
In 2009, 24,513 passengers had flown back and forth on Kenmore’s Port Angeles route compared with 23,490 in 2008, according to the port’s operations report for December.
In 2007, a total of 26,889 passengers had flown the route.
Alaska Airlines pact
O’Neill said the airline is still working on an interline agreement with Alaska Airlines so passengers can book flights from any Alaska Airlines destination straight through to Port Angeles.
“We and Alaska believe that Port Angeles is the perfect test market for this,” he said.
“We feel it will have a very positive impact and plow a lot of ground.”
The agreement was expected to begin in 2009, but technical problems have delayed it for months.
In 2009, the Port Angeles City Council approved $10,000, the Sequim City Council approved $7,000 and Kenmore contributed $10,000 for the matching portion of a $400,000 grant, which the U.S. Department of Transportation could make to the Port of Port Angeles.
The grant, which includes lodging tax funds from the city councils, is meant to bolster the unprofitable route between Port Angeles and Seattle.
O’Neill said the results of the grant are still out.
“We should be hearing any time now,” he said.
“There are some things that we aren’t ready to say quite yet that we will go toward aggressively if we get the grant — and if we don’t get it, then we will go forward aggressively, but we won’t be able to quite as much.”
Boat to be sold
In other business, the commissioners voted unanimously to sell a 38-foot wooden troller, Luard, whose owner had fallen behind in rent at the Port Angeles Boat Haven.
The auction for the boat will be Feb. 4 at 10 a.m. at 832 Boat Haven Drive.
__________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.
