New Panhandle Airport - Boon or Boondoggle?
This is a draft letter-to-ed or op-ed that I can’t seem to edit down enough to get it printed:
The panhandle airport’s hired ghost-writers have taken to personal slurs on their critics. In quick-response letters drafted for the airport chairman, we see politicians, government agencies, and Chamber of Commerce publicists as deliberative and wise, while editorial boards with decades of experience covering boondoggles suddenly “know nothing” and the opinion of a popular Floridian who happens to teach writing is “parrotting”, her passionate opinion a “work of fiction”.
The boosters of this airport have spent over $40 Million in state and federal grants to make their case. That’s a large megaphone to shout over, but I’ll try:
In 2000, this project was estimated to cost $115 Million LESS than renovating the present airport, and was confidently predicted to increase air service and lower air fares. Equally confident traffic forecasts showed 435,000 passengers using the present airport by 2005. On the down side, the present airport had insurmountable safety deficiencies. Lobbyists threatened rampant destructive development in the wetlands if environmentalists even requested FAA to do an Environmental Impact Statement.
Now the 2007 facts: Buried deep in those FAA studies, the real cost of the new airport is $331 Million and the cost to renovate the existing is $72 Million for upgrading the safety areas, for a net COST of $259 Million and a $374 Million SWING from savings to costs! Even more galling, the $40 Million already sunk in consultant studies (largely unusable designs and to get permits for the soggy “free land”) negates all future benefits, including land sales and other non-aviation benefits. The passenger traffic has DECLINED from 357,000 to 354,000 since 2000, meaning that future growth must now accelerate even more to arrive at the rosy future predicted in 2000. The daily airline departures have DECLINED from 22 per day to 12 or 13, thus vacating enough airspace for decades of airline growth. This flattening of growth makes the debt financing of the new airport a bailout risk for the Florida treasury. In a strange defense of how small the new airport is, the chairman says it will have only seven “active” gates - in fact it will have only THREE active gates and four spares. Let’s not even go into the secular collapse of the real estate economy and the retrenchment of legacy airlines so vital to small markets.
Some reasoned opinion added to these facts:
FAA completed the EIS and the Corps of Engineers cooperated with both the EIS and the dredge/fill permit. The EIS has been challenged because, in order to favor the new airport, FAA conflated modest community impacts with huge impacts to functioning wetlands. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection declares there is a “net environmental benefit” to converting both a vast remote wetland to an airport and a sleepy close-in airport to an intense mixed-use condo-town. This is an insult to intelligence.
The airport board chairman describes the present airport: “The Panama City airport does not meet federal safety and design standards, and the existing site is constrained by residential on three sides and water on the fourth.” Sounds ominous, but this description fits almost every existing airport! Do the names LaGuardia, Boston, Midway, Reagan-National, (and 240 more!) sound familiar? The arcane world of “FAA standards” is a hall of mirrors that FAA rearranges to reflect its current position on many matters, and the national aviation system will collapse if the “panhandle standard” of “plow this one under and build a new one” is applied widely. If the funding were not distorted by Florida’s generosity, this project would be far down FAA’s list.
The new airport has resoundingly failed to quantify its value in such a small market, as shown by its withdrawn benefit-cost analysis.
This plan is still premature (although originally to be completed in 2006!), it was overfunded by Jeb Bush and the legislature (see remarks on “sunk costs” above), and IT IS NOT THE BEST AVIATION PLAN FOR THE REGION.
Much of the cost of the new airport is duplicating the present airport on a new site that is oversized, environmentally disastrous, probably not in the best location to collect regional traffic, and offers no aviation growth in terms of more (versus longer) runways or community proximity. Even if the chosen location must be used, the impacts could be reduced by simply following a good example: the Southwest Florida Regional
Airport in Ft. Myers. By retaining its community airport and developing a one-long-runway airline facility, Ft. Myers avoided this expensive duplication and now has two complementary airports that are both valuable regional assets. Of course, Ft. Myers demonstrated robust growth BEFORE building a regional airport.
Consultant Bechtel judged that only one Bay County airport could be sustained, and it would be located to assist development as much as aviation (Not surprisingly, this plan also maximized consulting opportunities.) The judgment was obviously false because the escalating cost has been covered by parachuting in more new Florida grant money than the expected proceeds of selling the present site. The existing community airport is not actually replaced, and the new airport enhances only remote future communities while siphoning 93% of its passengers from the existing service area. The remaining aviation needs of the existing area are relegated to either grass fields or expensive new venues at the remote airport.
Viable alternatives exist in every debate and the money-driven narrative deserves skepticism. At a time when Florida government is asking for budget sacrifices, politicians have given this airport boondoggle a free pass. There is still time for better judgement.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I have just returned via our local Bay County Airport on a round trip to New Jersey. My husband often uses this airport for business and pleasure to points south. It is never crowded; never busy. I have written letters that have been printed in the PCNH and been very vocal about the construction of the new airport as frivolous, environmentally devastating, and totally unnecessary. There is a link through the Joe Company to the Bush family. The corruption that taints good ole boy politics locally also applies to big business.
I am old enough to know that there is nothing vaguely resembling free lunch in this complete boondoggle. There are no “gifts” of this size given without favors expected and strings attached.
The current airport has an excellent safety record. The Vice President landed here. The runway is sufficient. The parking is sufficient (then why are we building an additional paved parking lot when cars could park on the grass?) and if and when the Olympics come to town, we could use the floors as a curling court. At peak times, too. Just like now. Just like 20 years ago.
And with the economy in a tailspin, we aren’t going to fill all those empty mansions that have sprouted all over Bay County and condos on the beach so easily. The inconvenience of a 50 mile drive each way would probably persuade me to travel to Tallahassee, not only for necessity, but for my principals, too.