By KRISTIAN FODEN-VENCIL/Oregon Public Broadcasting
NEWPORT — Oregon has 98 airports, both private and public. Some are little more than a field where pilots can practice takeoffs and landings. Others, like Portland International, help drive Oregon’s economy.
Newport Airport, on the central Oregon Coast, lies somewhere in between. But locals want it to be bigger.
“We need to attract commuter air service,” said Newport city airport director Lance Vanderbeck, who is one of just three airport staff.
Newport has two large World War II-era runways, a place for visiting pilots to rent cars, a LifeFlight office, small hangars for planes, and a U.S. Coast Guard auxiliary station.
“We also have FedEx on the field, which is for cargo. UPS flies in on a daily basis. The other thing that we see is corporate flights, like Fred Meyer or Kroger,” Vanderbeck said. “We also get some of the larger entertainers that go up to the casino.”
Despite all the activity, there is a big hole — Newport doesn’t have commuter air service.
Attracting commuter flights can be the difference between businesses settling in town or moving somewhere more convenient.
“I probably head to Portland 40 to 50 times a year,” said Paula Miranda, the executive director of the Port of Newport.
She oversees the marina, with its fishing boats, research vessels and an RV park. That means lots of meetings, many in Portland. She makes the 2½-hour drive about once a week. Flying would take 45 minutes and be cheaper.
She said traffic, weather and timing often mean she has to stay the night when she’s out of town on business.
“I just went to a conference out of state. And I had to spend a night on my way in and on the way back,” she said.
Looming NOAA decision
The financial cost of losing passenger service has been minimal so far. But that could change – and one of the main reason for a recent survey of attitudes towards commuter air service.
In 2011 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded Newport its bid to be the homeport for two NOAA ships on the West Coast and provide logistical, engineering, electronics, maintenance and administrative support to all the ships in NOAA’s Pacific fleet – beating out three Puget Sound cities, where the fleet had previously been located. The NOAA fleet can include half a dozen vessels including deep sea research ships and nearshore scientific craft.
The move was a real feather in Newport’s cap, and an economic boon – but drew outcry and administrative protests from Washington state officials.
Shortly afterward, SeaPort canceled air service, leaving NOAA executives and scientists with a tougher commute from their homes in the Puget Sound area to Newport, and from Newport to Washington D.C., Portland or frankly anywhere.
NOAA signed a 20-year lease which is up in seven years. But NOAA has started studying its long-term needs for its Pacific fleet – and that has some officials around Lincoln County worrying.
“Our lease for the property occupied by the NOAA Marine Operations Center-Pacific ends in 2031,” Keeley Belva, spokeswoman for NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations said in an email to YachatsNews. “As part of the routine process before a lease expires, the agency has started to evaluate current and future facility needs of NOAA’s Pacific ship fleet. No decisions regarding the facility’s location beyond 2031 have been made.”
Miranda and others say keeping NOAA in Newport — and hanging on to other big businesses, for that matter — requires regular, reliable air service.
“NOAA is definitely a big factor,” Miranda said. “Because the port and the state put a lot of money into bringing NOAA here. We’re seven years away from their lease expiring. Do we want to keep them here? Of course, we do.”
Needs a subsidy
Attracting airlines to a small town is not easy. Profitability relies on having a critical mass of local travelers. And airlines won’t usually set up shop without government help.
The city’s last attempt to lure an airline was in 2018. For $500,000 in government help, Boutique Airline said it could provide 520 flights to Portland at a ticket cost of $45. After that, the airline would need more money. But the Oregon Department of Aviation did not approve the grant because not enough local businesses had come forward with concrete support.
Now Newport is taking another run. It recently conducted a survey to prove local interest.
“To find out if there’s any there, there,” said Paul Schuytema, executive director of the Economic Development Alliance of Lincoln County.
Schuytema said 235 businesses and individuals responded to the survey. Eighty percent said they’d consider purchasing air travel vouchers in advance.
“Then when we started diving into, ‘How often would you make trips?’ Those numbers blew me away,” he said. “There’s a huge chunk of the companies that responded that they would make well over 10 trips a year. To me that’s a lot. Some of them would make 200-plus trips a year.”
Lincoln County hosts a number of larger organizations, including a Georgia Pacific paper plant in Toledo, Oregon State University’s marine programs in Newport and the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City.
Now supporters have to convince local governments to back the idea.
Newport City manager Spencer Nebel thinks city councilors will probably provide some money. But he said it’s early.
“It’s not something that we’ve specifically talked about,” he said. “This is kind of a conversation that we’re building up to at this point.”
Airport supporters are spreading out across the central coast to build momentum. In the back of their minds is Redmond Municipal Airport.
In 2003, with a half-million dollar government grant, Redmond residents got 120 local companies to buy prepaid tickets — enough to both prove interest and attract air service. Now, 20 years later, Redmond Airport can boast 30 flights a day and five carriers.
- This story originally appeared Feb. 17, 2024 on Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The city of Newport promised NOAA that they would have air service and let it slip away. I don’t blame them if they pull out. The people of Newport let them down.
What short memories. There have been three attempts at establishing a commercial air service out of South Beach/Newport in the last 30 years or so. And I flew on all of them while they lasted. They all start the same, vendors are willing to give it a try but if there are subsidies involved. And they all end the same, as soon as the subsidies run out, vendors tell us they can’t afford it maintain the service. The reason is always the same, weather. These days, with all the hoopla about worsening weather due to ‘you know what’, the weather is only going to get worse. So they say. The subsidies will mostly likely be in the form of another tax. Just what we need.
Ridership was a problem too. I was able to ride next to the pilot of Harbor Air (the contractor who was awarded the contract for the heavily subsidized 1990’s trial of commercial flights to Corvallis and PDX) once because I was the only passenger. That happened not long before Harbor Air terminated service (subsidy had ended). A friend had the same experience w/the most recent heavily subsidized (ODOT Connect Oregon grant) commercial flight trial. Subsidy source was another ODOT Oregon Connect grant.
What are the reasons those who want to fly contract with a charter service instead of expecting city resident to subsidize commercial flights few of them take? The two or three heavily subsidized trials have demonstrated there’s not enough locals or tourists can or want to afford the fares. So, NOAA, the head of the Port of Newport, etc., could possibly cooperate in doing so.
The city of Newport can’t “afford” to have a real sidewalk network so people can walk safely around Newport, the city and county can’t afford to a bus system that can serve shift workers, so that more people could take mass transit to work or school — so why would anyone think the city can “afford” to subsidize commercial air flights? Anyone living in the port’s tax district already subsidizes the port’s users and activities and has had to pay off at least one bond the port required.
I checked out the fares for the last subsidized commercial flight. To get the cheapest fare (which cost more then gas to/from PDX at that time) you had to fly at 5 a.m. or other odd hours to get the cheapest fare. The contractor tried changing to a smaller plane, still couldn’t fill them or get enough pax to pay for the flight.
Still, if NOAA, et al, want flight service they can contract with/hire a charter service, can’t they?
My brother flew in from Conneticut to visit. When he was to leave we took him to the airport he was told that the flight was canceled due to the weather. They provided no transportation to Portland so he could connect with his next flight out of PDX and would not refund that portion of his ticket. They told him he could use the ticket at a later date. I think we now have daily transport to Portland. So unless something is done about the weather there doesn’t appear to be a reasonable solution.
It would be great to have air service, but I just do not see how it is sustainable. Most people outside of aviation have no idea the cost per hour to operate even a small airplane let alone the turbine engined planes usually flown by commuters. There are the costs of the airplane payments, or lease, the fuel, the maintenance, insurance, inspections, on and on. Then the crews. Pilots, ground staff, ticketing, etc. It’s not a surprise that operating costs can run into the thousands of dollars per operating hour of the airplane. Which is not sustainable.
So, it’s a wonderful dream to have air service here on the mid coast, but it’s time to wake up and look for a better reason for Noaa to stay.
Too bad there’s not a commuter train from Salem or Corvallis . Weathers always going to be a problem.
That would be great, wouldn’t it? There’s a RR right of way outside of Newport, along or near the Bay Rd, I think & a rail line from Toledo that, iirc goes to Corvallis or Albany. That track would need alot of expensive upgrading to be approved for use by passenger rail plus purchase of additional property so the track route could be straighter might be determined to be necessary. To me, it would be worth it, particularly if it mean that some of the freight currently carried by large commercial trucks on 101 & 20, could go mostly by rail instead, be transferred to smaller trucks once they reached Toledo or Newport to travel on 101.
Far as I know, there’s zero support for such a project in city gov’t of Newport Portland & Western or its parent company own the track, it might not be interested either.
I can understand the concerns of those who would like to expand the Newport airport to accommodate commuter flights. But guess what? The habitable portion of the coast is a fairly narrow band of land (mostly sand) between the Coast range and the ocean. Already the access to Newport from the north on 101 southbound is rapidly eroding; every time I see truck thundering by along the waterfront at Beverly Beach, I cringe , expecting the highway to crumble over a washed-out sand cliff, sending these trucks and cars careening into the ocean. Given this inescapable seaside terrain, can we really keep expanding our infrastructure? When is enough enough?