QX intends to start service from PAE (Paine Field/Everett, WA)
 

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/081002/20081002005817.html?.v=1

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Horizon Air is pursuing plans to introduce daily air service from Paine Field near Everett, Wash., before next summer.
The announcement comes after a 6-0 vote last month by the Everett City Council in favor of a resolution supporting scheduled commercial flights at Paine Field.

I think this is great news. I would love to take that flight up there and then visit the factory... Seems like it would be so much quicker than driving.

Its not a done deal.
 

I wouldn't hold your breath. They first have to "negotiate" with Snohomish County which owns the airport and in the past hasn't really wanted service there. The Everett City Council may want it, but you can bet the Mukilteo City Council don't. The Times article (below) references Allegiant's efforts to offer PAE-LAS service, which hasn't started.

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Horizon Air wants to begin passenger service at Snohomish County's Paine Field.

The Seattle-based airline notified county officials this morning of its desire to start flights as early as next summer, according to a Snohomish County spokesman.

Horizon Air says it plans to introduce daily service from Paine Field to Portland and Spokane, with scheduled times to facilitate same-day business trips between cities. Horizon intends to use 76-seat Bombardier Q400 turboprop airplanes.

In May, Allegiant Air, announced it wants to offer flights between Paine Field and Las Vegas. The Federal Aviation Administration has directed Snohomish County to "negotiate in good faith" with any airline expressing interest in using Paine Field, the spokesman said.

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon, who opposes commercial flights at the airport, said his office will continue to follow federal law, which requires good-faith negotiations with any airline.

"For personal reasons, I don't believe commercial air is compatible with current operations at Paine Field or the numerous households now surrounding the airport," Reardon said this morning. "But we will continue following the law."

Paine Field occupies more than 1,300 acres of land and has three paved runways. It is home to major aeronautics companies that account for more than 30,000 jobs in the Puget Sound, including Boeing, Goodrich, ATS and the soon-to-be-relocated Korry Electronics.

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PAE-PDX and PAE-GEG. Both make sense, but expect community outrage. After all the noise of Q-400s will make life unbearable for them, as will the additional vehicle traffic. :p

Oh, the irony.

I'm sure many smaller communities around the country would gladly suffer from a little airplane noise to get new air connections to major regional cities. I'm thinking SLE wouldn't mind to get a few QX flights, to SEA or SFO.

wow....they have been talking about bringing passenger service in for years.

Porter is an airline that started service from Toronto Island last year with Q400s. There was strong neighbourhood and city council opposition to this service.
The day Porter started flying, a city councillor told the media the airline's first flight had been delayed. The flight hadn't been delayed. It departed on time. The councillor and most neighbours didn't hear the Q400 depart.

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon, who opposes commercial flights at the airport, said his office will continue to follow federal law, which requires good-faith negotiations with any airline.

"For personal reasons, I don't believe commercial air is compatible with current operations at Paine Field or the numerous households now surrounding the airport," Reardon said this morning. "But we will continue following the law."
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Sounds like Mr. Reardon has never flown into the LA basin before. There are at least six airports served by scheduled service there and thousands of homes reside in co-existence with all manner of flights. This is the kind of small mindedness that stifles communities IMHO.
Paine should be taking some of the ground transportation strain off of I-5 and SEA by allowing flights years ago. I can't wait for Southwest to start nosing around about this. I think this is imminently preferable to a significant expansion of scheduled service at Boeing Field in south Seattle

My guess is the Snohomish County Council will demand a pound of flesh- in other words, lots of terminal upgrades, traffic concurrency requirements, and so on- the absolute maximum they can ask for without crossing the line into "bad faith".

I grew up seeing how neighborhoods and municipalities freak out about flights overhead- years of wrangling about helicopter flights to a children's hospital, something where the minutes lost between landing at a remote field and transferring to an ambulance could mean life or death. The neighborhood NIMBYs were grumbling about losing sleep from 3 am helicopter flights. :rolleyes: So yeah, this isn't surprising.

I dare say seeing Allegiant and Horizon operate from Paine Field, maybe Southwest in the farther future could be interesting...

Great idea, and I wish this could happen, although I don't have high hope on this happening soon.

BW

The Hilton Garden Inn nearby is one of my favorite hotels. It'd be great to do a park and fly from there.

One little peep out of Snohomish County and I can guarantee you QX will walk away. QX wants competitive offerings before they will sign any lease. They are not going to bend over for this one. While it is good, sound business for the airline, they are doing the county a favor by offering the service...its not the other way around.

Southwest has expressed interest in the past and I wouldn't doubt they would be looking into it once some sort of commericial presence has been established. They want a Love Field of Seattle. They couldn't have BFI ... and frankly, there is a bit of a market for northern puget sound for all of this.

How much I would love to have a very small regional-esk airport in the Seattle area. I hate seatac. I am overly jealous of say even RDM.

You can bet that the City of Mukilteo will be just as anal as the City of Burien was with SeaTac over the 3rd runway.

Tying up every step in the process with court action and environment studies is sure to scare away commercial traffic at PAE :(

No one has mentioned how a lot of this got started. G4/Allegiant Air went to the FAA and complained about the PAE airport organization, after their attempts to try and get PAE-LAS service started. The FAA then threatened PAE with dropping their airport grants if they don't bargain in 'good faith' with G4, as the grants are for maintaining a "Public Use" airport.

As much as PAE doesn't want G4 or QX operating there, they want the airport grants more. In this case (government) money talks, expect to see QX and G4 start building a terminal building in the next 6 months, even if it's a couple of trailers to start.

PAE are being completely stupid. We're talking (at most) 1x daily PAE-LAS/MD80, and QX (at most) 4x PDX and 3x GEG on Q400s. That's one more jet/day and maybe 7 Q400s (which are really quiet) into an airport where it's not unusual to see jetliners, or jetliner sized aircraft doing touch and goes (I've personally had to hold to wait for a C9 -- air force DC9 -- doing touch and goes).

As for the 'traffic problems' that this new service will create, we're talking (full load assumptions) a little over 600 people in and out a day. How many people does Boeing Everett employ? It's got to be at least 10x that, probably more.

PAE is underutilized ... besides.... a Q400 or one MD80 is the least of anyone's worries. They have a lot of boeing jets in and out when there is traffic.

Not to mention a lot of air cargo...

From a geographic point of view, PAE makes the most sense as a reliever airport in the Puget Sound area. It also already has the key infrastructure: a 9000-foot runway and freeway access.

I am sure that is why the NIMBYs are terrified.

While a few Q400s and an MD80 wouldn't impose much noise or traffic, what happens when WN decides they want to move from SEA to PAE? Undoubtedly, the locals see the beginning of a slippery slope and don't want to let commercial service at PAE get its nose under the tent.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out!