On a warm evening last August, when Jeff Northgraves, Knox County Regional Airport Manager, first heard the good news that sizeable federal
grant money was recently allocated to fledgling Penobscot Island Air, Northgraves kicked himself (just a little) for not having asked for more.
Down to the penny, the U.S. Department of Transportation handed out an amount equal to each and every request he made.
The $555,000.00 Small Community
Air Service Development Program grant will pay for passenger ticket subsidies, an airfield liability insurance premium and some personnel costs
for overseeing flights and airfield conditions. These grants have seeded other small operations – Sault Sainte Marie in Minnesota got $587,000, while Ruidoso, New Mexico, got $600.000 – but for the coastal islands of Maine, this was groundbreaking news.
Penobscot Island Air (PIA) provides routine and emergency flights between the mainland and private and municipal island airfields including North Haven, Vinalhaven, Matinicus, Islesboro, Blue Hill, Criehaven, Swan’s Island and Stonington.
“Right now we charge $50 per ticket, one way for a flight if there’s another passenger aboard, $90 if there isn’t,” explains PIA’s Jim Nichols. “Hopefully these subsidies will keep ticket prices down and increase ridership to the islands.”
“The previous owners of this airline found that they could not charge passengers enough per ticket to make the trip profitable,” explains Northgraves. “This is why this subsidy is so crucial.”
PIA must pay its own insurance premiums to land on the mostly privately owned strips on which it lands. News that funds from this Small Community Air Service Development Program Grant will help
defray this cost has been warmly received. “For us that $8,000 not annually expended to the insurance company can now be put into our airline company in some other way,” Northgraves said, “like upgrading the lighting at Matinicus airstrip, or putting up more $800 to $900 windsocks on North Haven, Vinalhaven and Matinicus.”
“The Island Institute’s role last spring, on grant-application deadline, was to track the pieces and convene the people,” said Rob Snyder, Vice President for Programs. “The Institute was originally going to act as the fiscal agent, but it was better to pull reps from each island to form the Knox County Consortium of Islands.”