Essential Air Service at Dickinson, North Dakota

Order 2005-1-9
OST-1995-697

Issued January 7, 2005 | Served January 15, 2005

Order Selecting Carrier | Word

The proposals submitted by Mesa/Air Midwest have not garnered any expressions of community support, and they would require more subsidy than the corresponding proposals of Great Lakes Aviation. We thus focus our attention on which of Great Lakes Aviation’s proposal options the Department should select.  After a thorough review of the carriers’ proposals and the communities’ comments, we have decided to select Great Lakes Aviation to provide small community air service at Dickinson consisting of two nonstop round trips to Denver each weekday and each weekend with 30-passenger Embraer Brasilia aircraft for the period of October 1, 2004, through January 31, 2007, for $1,697,248 annually.  Our decision is consistent with statutory criteria, particularly with respect to the community’s carrier and aircraft size preferences, Great Lakes Aviation’s service reliability, and its code-sharing and interline arrangements with other carriers at the Denver hub.  The carrier’s proposed service and subsidy level is reasonable, and the carrier’s service at its other subsidized essential air service communities continues to be satisfactory.

We are selecting this option rather than Great Lakes Aviation’s two-round-trip Beech 1900D option solely because the factors we cited in Order 2002-9-1 - the long 488-mile nonstop distance from Dickinson to Denver and the seat limitations on both small and large aircraft serving Denver during the summer—still apply.  Nonetheless, we noted in Order 2002-9-1 that we “strongly encourage the community officials of Dickinson…to work closely with Great Lakes to increase ridership and ultimately to reduce the amount of subsidy required to support the service.”  We cannot help but notice that this latter goal has not been met.  Although we are selecting the least expensive of Great Lakes Aviation’s 30-passenger aircraft proposals, the subsidy rate of $1,697,248 represents an increase of $157,159 over the current rate set by Order 2002-9-1.

By: Karan Bhatia