Boardings for the city’s commercial airline service reportedly picked up in May at a rate that was significantly higher than the previous month.
Southern Airways Express, the Essential Air Service provider at South Arkansas Regional Airport at Goodwin Field, reported 133 enplanements for May, compared to less than 35 in April, said Johnathan Estes, manager of SARA.
Estes said 92 passengers boarded flights to Dallas and 41 boarded flights to Memphis last month.
Though the May numbers fall far below enplanements for the same month in 2019, Estes said the news is encouraging since overall boarding numbers have decreased this year because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
“Since we’re moving on up, heading into the summer, that’s probably a good sign that people are starting to become more comfortable with their travels as COVID-19 restrictions wind down,” Estes said.
In May of 2019, Southern reported 402 enplanements — 273 to Dallas and 129 to Memphis.
Estes noted that it was the same month that Southern began offering a Memphis route.
He previously reported that boardings had been trending downward since January but the trend started to reverse with a slight uptick in enplanements during the week of May 17 – 24.
“There was an average of five people per day, not per flight,” Estes said then.
As an EAS provider, Southern is subsidized by the federal government to fly its scheduled routes, “whether they have one passenger or nine,” said Estes.
He added that a notice issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation regarding the enforcement and administration of its EAS program and the conditions that prompted the notice did not affect commercial air service at SARA.
In response to a decrease in flights and passengers nationwide due to COVID-19, the USDOT issued a notice in April outlining the terms under which EAS providers would be compensated for flights that were not completed.
According to the USDOT notice, “The Office of Aviation and International Affairs authorized payments of 50 percent of the contracted per-flight subsidy for flights that are not completed due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, so long as an EAS air carrier serving a community in the continental United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico completes at least one round trip flight a day, six days a week, for that EAS community.”
The notice also applies to an EAS air carrier that serves a community in Alaska and completes at least 50 percent of its weekly schedule for that community.
The USDOT reported that as of June 1, airlines across the country carried 14 percent of the passenger volume that they carried during the same period in 2019. Those numbers include EAS communities.
“These carriers state that the demand for passenger air travel remains low and the financial effects continue to be challenging,” USDOT officials said.
As a result, the USDOT Aviation Enforcement Office agreed not to initiate enforcement actions against EAS carriers for failure to comply with their respective level-of-service requirements.
Initially, the new terms were effective until June 30 but the USDOT has extended the notice to Sept. 30.
“That doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with us. To my knowledge, Southern Airways hasn’t planned on canceling any flights. They’re still flying at 100 percent capacity,” Estes said. “I think it does offer good insight about how other airlines around the nation are being affected by COVID-19.”
The SARA manager said he does not know if the public health crisis will have any bearing on the start of the rebidding process for the EAS contract for the area.
In addition to El Dorado, Southern also serves Hot Springs and Harrison.
In 2019, the airline was awarded two-year contracts to provide EAS service for each community.
Per the current contract cycle, Southern is to offer weekly 12 round trip flights to Dallas and six to Memphis, with a subsidy of $2.5 million for the first year and $2.6 million in the second year.
El Dorado and Southern are in the second year of the contract, which expires May 1, 2021.
Estes said he expects the rebidding process to start in late fall or early 2020, barring any effects from the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also said a new data survey will completed and the results will be used for bid considerations by SARA and the USDOT.
A study that was completed in December of 2018 and that was used for the 2019 bid cycle showed that 36 percent of passengers that flew out of SARA to Dallas connected to flights with another airline, while 64 percent remained local (in Dallas).
Estes said the top five most popular destinations for boardings at SARA were Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, New York City and Seattle.
Zip codes for the top six catchment areas (where passengers registered for flights) were El Dorado, Camden, Magnolia, the Junction City area, Smackover and Crossett.
Estes said he expects the data to change when the next survey is conducted this year, noting that at the time the 2018 survey was taken, Southern was offering flights only to Dallas and had not yet been approved for the Memphis route.
“I anticipate that we will see a different group of people with an interest in going to Memphis. I hope to see a broader number of zip codes in the data service area,” Estes said.
Trends that are captured in the survey are also used to help develop marketing and promotion strategies for EAS in El Dorado, he said.
“That way, we try to figure out if we need to do more marketing here or more marketing there. Ours is kind of spread out around here in South Arkansas, whereas in Hot Springs, everything is kind of clustered around Hot Springs,” Estes said.
Bid approved
During a conference call meeting Monday, the El Dorado Airport Commission approved a bid of $280,533.76 for a timber-clearing and grubbing project at SARA.
The bid went to Taylor Hendrix LLC in Hope
The project will center around Runway 13 “to secure a safe flight path for planes taking off and landing,” Estes said.
