Elko Applies to SCASDP for More Service to Reno

I’m calling this “SCASDP Week” here at BNET Travel. Yeah, it doesn’t have much of a ring to it, but I promise it’s more interesting than it sounds. What, never heard of SCASDP before? That’s the federal government’s Small Community Air Service Development Program, and it allows small communities to apply for funding for various projects to improve air service viability. Applications for this year’s grants have been pouring in, so this week, I’m going to be looking a different proposal every day to see how communities are attempting to deal with the reduction and loss of service that most are seeing. Today, I’m looking at Elko, Nevada.

Fuel price goes up, service comes down. That’s no surprise, but it is pretty interesting to watch airports apply for a grant so they can regain some of that lost service. They should probably be happy that they still have service at all the way things are going, but I’m not going to look at too many of those types of proposals. Today I’m looking at Elko, because Elko is different. Elko sees the writing on the wall and wants to try and stop it before it happens.

Elko’s proposal (PDF) notes that while there are currently four daily flights on Brasilias to Salt Lake City, they know that SkyWest is retiring those planes and the CRJ is likely going to be the replacement. They assume that frequency will continue to drop as those larger planes are rolled out and they want to do something about it.

Up until this point, I don’t think this is a bad idea. If they can use the money to get more people on those planes, they could potentially reduce the impact of a Brasilia retirement when it happens. At least they’d be able to give it their best shot. That’s probably how the money should be used, but that’s not what they’re proposing. And this is where I think the proposal takes a nosedive.

Vision Airlines has announced it will start a flight next year from Elko to Reno. Now, Vision is a small operator and there aren’t really any great connections available in Reno. So how does Elko want to use this requested $200,000? They want to add ANOTHER flight to Reno. I just can’t imagine that lasting, and more importantly, it doesn’t provide good connectivity throughout the country.

This is one I would be surprised to see succeed. There are better ways they could put that money to use.