By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Last month, the current carrier at Hays Regional Airport, SkyWest Airlines, filed notice with the U.S. Department of Transportation it would terminate service in 90 days in 29 cities across the country, including Hays, Salina, Dodge City and Liberal.
DOT immediately issued a hold-in order for SkyWest to stay in Hays. It also contained a request for Essential Air Service proposals for the 29 communities.
Those were due Monday, April 11.
On the previous Friday, April 8, the city of Hays received word the due date was pushed back 30 days by DOT.
"We can only speculate on the reason why they pushed it back. We don't know why," City Manager Toby Dougherty said last week.
SkyWest serves a total of 49 communities nationwide within the EAS program.
"The only distinguishing characteristic that we're being told is the 29 communities are all associated with United Airlines, and the others are Delta or American," Dougherty told city commissioners. "I'm sure there's some meaning behind that. We don't know what it is."
The three-year DOT EAS contract between SkyWest and Hays Regional Airport started in August 2021.
There are a limited number of carriers that participate in the EAS program and an ongoing national pilot shortage is affecting all the regional carriers.
"To drop 29 markets, it's going to be hard for the existing carriers to pick those up. Some of them will come in and try to cherry pick (airports) that fly more passengers."
Dougherty said Hays has been "told by DOT that they will continue to issue hold-in orders to SkyWest as long as it takes to keep them here to find suitable service for us. So that's more than likely the 90 days."
"We've been told by SkyWest they fully expect to be in a lot of communities after the first of the year."
Dougherty encourages the public to continue booking their flights as usual through United Airlines, which is available online at flyhays.com.
Hays is now tagging with Salina — serving two communities with the same plane — which allows for dual hub service.
"You can go east in the morning (to Chicago) and west in the afternoon (to Denver.) There are also 14 flights a week now instead of the 12 we got before. ... Now we have two every day."
Key Lime Air, doing business as Denver Air Connection, has indicated interest in submitting a bid for EAS at the Salina Regional Airport, according to the Salina Airport Authority.
"They do have an interest in Hays," Dougherty said."
"It's quite frankly just a matter of equipment and personnel. They would have to scale up to serve more communities. It's not that easy because they're kind of dealing with the same pilot shortage issues that everybody else is.
"There are only a few carriers out there that have the jet service that we think our market needs, and as you can imagine, they're in high demand. ... The carriers want to come in and pick up communities but there's only so much room to expand," Dougherty added.
Both Hays and Salina use the same air service consultant.