Airport board set for change

Gainesville Sun - August 19, 2001
By TIM LOCKETTE
Sun staff writer

Or at least, that's the future as envisioned by some members of the new majority on the Gainesville/Alachua County Regional Airport Authority's board of directors, where a recent shift in political power could lead to major changes in the way the airport is run.

"We're like the team owners and the airport director is like the coach," said board member Pat Bainter. "When there's a change in owners, you're going to see a change in the way the game is played."

Bainter was one of five members of the board who voted earlier this month to fire airport Director Gene Clerkin, who had served in the position for 17 years. The board had long been divided into factions, partly due to arguments over Clerkin's management style.

Clerkin's critics didn't have the votes to topple him until last month, when the Gainesville City Commission appointed two new board members. After voting to fire the director, new members Janice Honeyman and Jon Morris both said the commission had appointed them to make major changes in the way the airport is run.

The board will likely see another political shake-up in September, as the committee votes to elect a new chairman. Board members are likely to elect Bainter, the only nominee for the position, ending the chairmanship of Clerkin supporter Marilyn Tubb.

And more airport employees may get the boot after the board finds a new airport director.

"I would hope everything would be subject to review," said board member W. E. "Mac" MacEachern. "I suspect there's a lot of duplication out there, a lot of people in positions they don't need to be in."

Pilots vs. passengers
But don't expect a shake-up at the airport to lead to lower fares any time soon.

"The airline situation is not going to clear up overnight," said board member James Gallagher. "But there are other things we can do to bring business to the airport."

Ridership has been steadily falling at the airport for the past decade, a decline most board members attribute to the airport's lack of airfares to places Gainesville residents want to go. The solution to that problem, most board members say, is to attract more airlines.

But board members have been at odds over how to attract them - and over how important passenger service is to the airport's overall business. Under Tubb's leadership, the board has focused on building new hangars and better passenger terminal facilities to attract carriers to the airport.

But MacEachern, Gallagher and others want the airport to focus on lowering landing fees and fuel prices. Those changes, they say, would help attract both airlines and private pilots - and private pilots, they say, could help keep the airport in the black.

"It's basically a battle between those of us who want to focus on passengers and others who want to focus on pilots," Tubb said.

This month's power shift has put the "pilot" faction in the driver's seat.

"We can make money off passengers, but we can also make money selling gas," Honeyman said. She wants the airport to market itself to private pilots - and she's not so sure the airport really needs a new airline.

"Our fares are competitive a lot of the time," she said. "We need to change the perception that our prices are high."

Another problem with the public perception of the airport, she said, is its reputation for late and canceled flights. The solution, she said, is to give economic incentives - like lower landing fees - to airlines with a good record of on-time takeoffs and landings.

Meet George Jetson
If the new majority gets its way, you're likely to see more government aircraft flying out of the airport, too. Some of the board's members say they want the airport to pursue contracts to sell aviation fuel to the military, a move that would increase the use of the airport by military aircraft. And board members on both sides of the political divide want to get Gainesville's airport involved in a NASA research project called the Small Aircraft Transportation System.

SATS is an ambitious federal plan to turn the nation's smaller airports into a kind of airborne interstate highway system. NASA officials want to use technology from the space program to create a new generation of cheaper, easier-to-fly small planes, encouraging more people to buy their own aircraft for business travel and allowing others to provide cheap "air taxi" service between small cities.

That's half the plan. The other half is to make sure those new pilots have access to an airport in every community in the country. They plan to do that by installing a new generation of aircraft guidance systems in small airports across the country.

"Originally the idea sounded like something out of the Jetsons," Honeyman said. "It sounded like they wanted to put a flying car in every garage."

According to NASA estimates, it could take 20 years to get the SATS system up and running. Potentially a massive project, so far SATS has $69 million in federal funding for five years of research. But some of that research is going to be done at one of Florida's small airports, and board members want to make sure Gainesville is the one.

"We're in a perfect position to be one of the test sites for this technology," said Bainter, who has acted as contact between the NASA program and the board. The airport is a good candidate, Bainter said, because it has a control tower and radar coverage, something not available at many of Florida's small airports.

SATS may not have appeared on the public's radar yet, but it's a high priority for members of the board. In making the motion to fire Clerkin, Gallagher cited what he saw as Clerkin's failure to pursue SATS funding as one of the reasons the director should be fire.

Tubb says Gallagher isn't being fair to Clerkin.

"We've been working on this for a long time, and I think we're ahead of other airports," Tubb said.

A good salesman
The board's new leadership hasn't given up on attracting new airlines to Gainesville, but they do plan to try a new approach to recruiting those airlines.

"We need a good salesman," Bainter said. "Gene Clerkin had a wonderful set of skills, but in the present atmosphere I think we need a different set of skills."

Some board members say they want to try a more polished approach - possibly abandoning recruiting efforts by civic leaders and hiring a public relations firm to do the job instead.

"We need the support of people like CEO (the Council for Economic Outreach)," MacEachern said. "But we don't need them as the main point of contact with the air carrier. It doesn't work that way any more."

But others say that approach has been tried already.

"It's a fine idea, but it's something we're already doing," Tubb said. "We've brought consultants here to talk about how to attract airlines and we paid for a study of our passenger leakage."

But members of the authority say that they will want a new director who already has contacts in the airline world, possibly a director from a larger airport.

"We need someone who might not consider Gainesville at first blush," Bainter said.

Tim Lockette can be reached at 374-5088 or tim.lockette@gainesvillesun.com.

See August 19, 2001, issue of Gainesville Sun for original article.