Securing commercial air service remains goal for Tuscaloosa National Airport

With a new year comes a renewed effort to lure commercial air service to the Tuscaloosa National Airport.

The City Council is expected Tuesday to sign off on another contract with Indiana-based Volaire Aviation Consulting, which will continue its attempts to identify and recruit a passenger-based flight provider to Tuscaloosa.

This new, 12-month contract is priced at $47,000 with a performance bonus of up to $20,000 and, if approved, will be at least the third such contract with Volaire to achieve the commercial air service goal.

“We’re actually committing to getting air service,” said Selvyn Greene, director of infrastructure for the city’s Infrastructure and Public Services department, under which the airport falls. “We’re not stopping until we get it.”

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The contract with Volaire was part of a multi-prong update to the airport’s strategic operating plan – the first since 2019 – as adopted by the Airport Advisory Committee.

This plan contains a number of goals, from securing federal funding to aid with runway expansion and improvements to the airport’s terminal to, ultimately, finding federal dollars to assist with the recruitment and retention of a passenger airline.

It also includes increases for fuel, landing and special event fees that will be tied to the weight of aircraft.

Increasing these fees is meant to help keep as much as the airport’s annual $800,000 to $1 million in operating costs off the shoulders of local taxpayers while ensuring larger and heavier aircraft pay their fair share.

“We’re not trying to go after any of your smaller aircraft,” said Airport Manager Jeff Powell, noting that many of these fees will not apply to planes weighing less than 6,000 pounds.

David Pass, chair of the Tuscaloosa National Airport Committee and member of the city’s Airport Advisory Committee, said the strategic operating plan has three primary focal points: maintaining financial sustainability for the airport, positioning the airport for economic development and growth across Tuscaloosa region, and recruiting commercial air service.

“On behalf of the committee, the recommendations you have today are unanimous,” Pass said.

Now known as the Tuscaloosa National Airport, this facility was acquired by the city at the end of World War II.

The 724-acre property includes two runways, two fixed-base operators, a flight school and a car rental facility.

The airport was home to commercial airline service for about 50 years before American Eagle, a regional subsidiary of American Airlines, ceased operations in 1997. Other airlines through the years offered daily flights to regional hubs like Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; and Memphis, Tennessee.

In 2006, the city paid the Boyd Group consulting firm $8,500 to help lure air service here. After three years, the group was unable to find an interested provider, with easy access to the Birmingham airport via interstate as one of main drawbacks.

Efforts were renewed in earnest in 2016, when the City Council contracted with Sixel Consultants Group to help lure a passenger airline while advising on upgrades to the airport’s existing facilities in order to accommodate the service.

The city paid Sixel Consultants $5,500 to meet with various airlines in an effort to entice one to operate in Tuscaloosa and another $7,500 to consult on what upgrades the airport will need.

That gave way to contracts with Volaire, which was hired in May 2019 to help recruit commercial airlines to the region’s airport and retained again later that year for $22,500. Volaire conducted a community survey to determine what level of support that commercial air service would get from local residents. The survey also sought to find out how many residents from the Tuscaloosa area are now flying out of other locations, such as Birmingham or Columbus, Mississippi.

This move included a joint funding agreement with the University of Alabama, the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority not to exceed $40,000.

While efforts were moving ahead to recruit a commercial air provider to the airport, the global coronavirus pandemic reset those efforts multiple times, officials said.

As the airline industry was returning to normal after the initial wave of COVID-19 hit, the Delta variant slowed it again.

Another resurgence in the market was then slowed by the lingering Omicron variant.

Now, airport officials are planning to be ready when the aviation industry is, again, ready to expand into new areas.

“There are still opportunities,” Powell said, noting that as one airline provider backs away, another sees an opportunity to seize market share.

“We’re going to get air service,” Greene said. “It’s just a matter of when.”

Reach Jason Morton at jason.morton@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Commercial air service remains a goal for Tuscaloosa National Airport