Columbia Airport: Time to throttle up

Many of us were surprised a few weeks ago when Mayor Bob McDavid blew the warning trumpet about the future of service at Columbia Regional Airport.

If we had been paying attention to the airport, we wouldn’t have been surprised at McDavid’s statement. By now you’ve heard plenty about its inadequacies and how scheduled airline service may eventually disappear.

Delta says it plans to phase out the 50-passenger jets it’s been using to connect Columbia with its Memphis hub in favor of larger, more economical-to-operate jet aircraft that carry a hundred or more passengers. This takes us back to 1966 when then regional carrier Ozark Airlines announced it was replacing its “museum” of 28-passenger, twin-engine DC-3s with a fleet of then brand-new Fairchild-Hiller FH-227 turbo-prop planes configured to seat up to 48 passengers. Construction of Columbia’s new airport was just under way, and Ozark’s announcement establishing a DC-3 phase-out date was the startling jolt that got the city moving more quickly to finish the airport and its longer runways.

With commercial carriers heavily regulated until 1978 by the Civil Aeronautics Board, many routes were subsidized by Postal Service contracts. Ozark thrived by offering daily flights to St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield, and from there connections to virtually anywhere. Then deregulation changed everything.

Booming in Bloomington

You may have heard about the recent success of the Bloomington, Ill., airport — known officially as Central Illinois Regional Airport, or CIRA — and its model air terminal with three jetways and room for a few more. CIRA saw more than half a million passengers last year on several dozen daily flights to a four significant hubs, including Chicago’s O-Hare International Airport that’s just 130 miles away. Consider that CIRA draws patrons from significant surrounding communities including Peoria, Springfield, Decatur, Champaign-Urbana and dozens of other places as far away as Joliet and LaSalle-Peru.

With this in mind, imagine our revamped and updated airport’s regional draw from Columbia and its environs: Jefferson City, the Lake of the Ozarks, Fulton, Mexico, Moberly, Boonville and other places as far away as Kirksville. With upwards of a half-million or more potential users, this appears to be a viable market to draw from if service by several carriers to one or more hubs could be nailed down.

While Bloomington planned its grand strategy to modernize its airport, build a new terminal with a trio of jetways and offering an abundance of free parking close by, Columbia wasn’t paying much attention to aviation.

Bloomington gambled and won. At least for now.

Worth the Gamble

Now Columbia needs to gamble because the future of this community and its growing metropolitan area requires reliable aviation connections if the region is to continue to thrive.

We have a mayor who “gets it,” who pays attention to the aviation industry and our airport, and who understands why access coming and going by air is so vital to economic development and the region’s prosperity and well being.

Still, it’s going to be a tough sell. For starters, let’s get serious about aviation and separate the airport from the city of Columbia Public Works Department.

Then let’s upgrade the adminstration of the airport into a new city department headed by a director of aviation. We must be prepared to shell out big bucks to hire a heavy hitter with plenty of industry connections and gravitas.

Planning for a new terminal is already under way. Construction could be financed with municipal bonds backed by an increase in the bed tax collected from Columbia hotels.

Getting serious means also means engaging the whole realm of actual and potential users, and we all know who those big players are.

There’s no time for obfuscation and delay. Whatever we end up calling the city’s flying field northeast of Ashland, the time is now to fix the airport. It’s time to take whatever measures are necessary to keep the region connected by air — even subsidies, if necessary.

There are no excuses this time. This simply has to be done!