Trenton airport faces cut in federal funding

TRENTON – The Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport fell 142 passengers short of a federally-mandated goal for 2006, a sign that its funding could drop significantly.

“There is a bit of irony here,” Airport Manager Bob Cossette said Thursday. “Our passengers last year actually increased by 1.7 percent, but as far as the [Federal Aviation Administration] is concerned, only revenue passengers are considered and that number declined by about 300 or so.”

For the past six years, the FAA has awarded the Down East airport a $1 million entitlement for reaching an annual passenger threshold of 10,000.

If the 2006 numbers hold true and the Trenton airport falls short, funding could drop to $150,000 and could severely affect operations at the small, seasonally driven facility, Cossette said.

“We don’t know how the FAA wants to proceed,” he said. “When you start competing for discretionary money, there is only so much to spread around. They have always treated us fairly well, so I’m trying to be optimistic.”

Cossette still has until March to encourage charter services to submit their numbers to the FAA, thereby boosting the airport’s total.

By law, only commercial airlines are required to submit passenger statistics. Operators of chartered planes, however, can submit their data on a voluntary basis, and Cossette is urging those services to do so.

“This airport relies heavily on charter services, particularly in the summer months,” he said.

“In the past, charter operators have been reluctant to release numbers, because they feel it’s proprietary. We understand, but their individual number won’t be released; they will only be applied toward the total number.”

Entitlement funding from the FAA is used for capital improvements.

In 2006, for instance, the airport received more than $2 million from the FAA to reconstruct its second runway.

Cossette said that even if the passenger count falls short, projects related to safety at the airport likely would not be affected.

However, even if the airport convinces enough charter services to submit statistics for 2006, the decline in passengers is something Cossette said will have to be addressed.

For 2005, the airport barely met the 10,000 threshold and the year before, only 10,647 paid passengers used the airport.