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Paying for empty planes: Some rural flights heavily subsidized, but defenders call it lifeline
The EAS was created to ensure service on less profitable routes to remote communities when airlines were deregulated in 1978.
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation did not respond to a request for comment about the program, which has grown in scope and cost. In 1999 the EAS served 89 communities — 68 in the continental United States, one in Hawaii and 20 in Alaska. Today, it serves 45 in Alaska and 108 elsewhere, and over the last 10 years the budget quadrupled from $50 million to $200 million.
The subsidies go to about a dozen airlines, but in 2010 almost one-third of the entire budget — $67.8 million _went to Great Lakes, which is based in Cheyenne, Wyo. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Ely is an extreme case. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said it is one of just three cities in the program that have subsidies higher than $1,000 per passenger. The others are Glendive, Mont., and Alamogordo, N.M.
Republicans targeted flights out of other cities such as Morgantown because they are relatively close to major airports.
Mike Coster, Ely's airport manager, said the location between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City is the most remote airport in the continental United States.
"We have no bus service here of any kind, no Greyhound or similar company," Coster said. "It's a small town."
Severin Borenstein, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who helped design the EAS program, said Congress originally intended for the program to end after 10 years. He said the subsidies are a "big problem" in place like Ely, which averages one or two passengers per flight.
"I can see the argument for making some of them permanent, but the standards should be higher," Borenstein said.
