Airport manager Bob Ziegelaar at times has not been able to get a flight home. “I’ve been caught in that trap,” he said. “I’ve rented a car before to go from Boston to Bangor. I’ve jumped on the Portland flight with desperation.

“And I’ve had to do that from Newark as well,” he continued. “When I got to Newark, and my flight to Bangor had already left, they told me I was on my own. I asked them if the Portland flight was still there, and they said yes. To make a long story short, I ran to the gate and jumped on it. At least I got to Maine that evening.”

Traveling is one of the frustrations Ziegelaar said he shares with the customers served by Bangor International Airport. He knows he’s in the hot seat. First, he has to be a listening ear to the Bangor City Council and area residents who wonder why traveling from Bangor has become more of a chore. Then he has to be a salesperson to airlines whose planes he wants here, but whose management may not be willing to listen to his pitch.

“If you travel a lot, you take those things in stride,” Ziegelaar said about his adventures in Boston and Newark. “But if you’re only traveling two or three times a year, and it’s really only for pleasure or vacation, and you feel that you’ve paid a fair amount of money for the privilege of flying on this airline, and then the service evaporates, you’re going to be very annoyed.”

He said he doesn’t blame them. Airline deregulation has made a puzzle out of travel planning and actual traveling. Too many connecting flights, too many planes, too many people, and too many tricks to getting the best fares contribute to the maze.

“It’s been a free-for-all,” said Ziegelaar, who has been airport manager since April 1990, and before that, marketing director. “People have seen that. People feel that they’re being treated badly. Bangor’s no exception. The Midwest is having a huge problem. They either have no service at all, or one carrier. And people are sick and tired of it. That’s why you have that push in Congress for passenger rights legislation.”

Being an airport manager is a challenge, Ziegelaar said, one with more irritation than triumph. That’s because of the changes in the industry, he said.

“Personally, it’s been extremely frustrating because I understand where the local people come from when they complain about their air service, in terms of quality, and in terms of fares and in terms of capacity,” Ziegelaar said. “It’s frustrating because the explanation for the problem is so complicated. It’s very similar to what’s happened in the utility industry, and what’s happened in the telephone industry.”

But Ziegelaar said he has to take the frustrations in stride, because it’s part of his job.

“Sometimes you’ve got to have a thick skin,” he said. “I can’t complain about my time here. The community as a whole has been very supportive.

“I know there’s a little bit of scuttlebutt right now about what’s happening at the airport because we just don’t have the service that we had five years ago,” he said. “But, if I couldn’t live with that, I wouldn’t be here.”

Airlines have changed their approach to passengers and to the managers who operate the airports, Ziegelaar said. Being profitable instead of practical has airlines picking and choosing which markets they want to serve, and rural airports like Bangor’s aren’t high on the priority lists, he said.

“I don’t think we mind doing it. It’s just a marketing role we’ve had to get used to over the years,” Ziegelaar said of the newer role of rural airport managers. “The domestic service at Bangor always took care of itself. There was a market here. The airlines wanted to serve it. The economic returns to the airlines were fairly stable.

“Then all of a sudden that got thrown into disarray by this unbelievable competitive pressure for low-fare tickets, particularly in the large, urban markets,” he said. “That has been driving business fares out of sight, and driving fares in rural areas out of sight. Somebody ultimately had to pay for those super-discounted seats between New York and L.A., and Houston and Chicago. We feel that rural America really has taken it on the chin to support the low fares in urban America.”

Those “super-discounted fares” are just as hard to obtain for airport managers as they are for vacationers, Ziegelaar said. He said he’s fighting the same battles like any other person in the area.

“I pay the same fares,” he said. “There’s no perks. No nothing. But I have a lot of inside knowledge. I don’t pay the $600 to $800 fares regularly because we use the computer extensively to sort out what the cheapest fares are, and we will adjust our travel schedules regularly.

“And we don’t fly first class.”

Regardless of the frustrations, Ziegelaar said he is staying put.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I have no plans.”