When the coronavirus pandemic struck the Upper Valley last year, business as many people knew it came to a halt. Workers were sent home, meetings became a virtual affair and travel — for both business and leisure — was avoided by many at all costs.
In the fallout, Lebanon Municipal Airport struggled.
The West Lebanon facility relies on a steady stream of executives, Dartmouth College visitors and Upper Valley residents and others seeking convenient flights to Boston and New York to help cover its roughly $1.3 million annual budget, which includes salaries and benefits for city employees, as well as maintenance and snow removal costs. (Other functions at the airport, such as the control tower and Transportation Security Administration workers, are covered by other sources.)
Without those passengers, the municipally run operation was in trouble, according to Airport Manager Carl Gross.
“We didn’t see the number of landings. We didn’t see the number of corporate traffic that you normally would have,” he said during an interview last week.
In some cases, the decreases were steep. The number of people boarding Cape Air jets in Lebanon fell by at least 73%, from more than 10,000 in 2019 to 2,660 in 2020, Gross said.
And overall airport operations — including private flights — dropped by about 28%, from roughly 28,000 in 2019 to just 20,000 in 2020.
Like many airports, Lebanon turned to federal relief to shore up its coffers. Through grants approved by Congress, the city is slated to receive more than $3 million that officials hope to tap into to keep the airport afloat and revenue-neutral through 2022.
But what everyone, including Gross, seems to agree on is that the one-time money won’t provide long-term stability, and action is needed to make the airport and its surrounding land profitable when the federal dollars are gone.
Just before the pandemic, Lebanon took several steps to generate future profits at its property off of Route 12A. Those included new leases, updated landing fees and plans to expand the surrounding business park.
Now that the pandemic appears to be residing, officials hope their efforts will start to pay off.
“I think those things are really going to hopefully move us in a positive direction financially,” Lebanon Mayor Tim McNamara said, adding that his goal is to make the airport capable of “standing on its own.”
City Councilor Karen Liot Hill, who previously criticized the airport for its reliance on Lebanon tax dollars, also stressed the importance of new money-making initiatives.
“I think the stimulus funds provided a bit of a bridge to a future where an airport is self-sustaining,” she said.
However, Liot Hill said, that future has so far been “slow going” to the point where she’s heard some residents suggest that closing the airport altogether could be easier.
“Lebanon Airport has been a huge burden for the taxpayers of Lebanon for a very long time now,” she said.
Lebanon’s modern-day airport was born in 1960 with the opening of a 5,500-foot runway that saw the start of commercial flights out of the city. Hailed by politicians as an economic asset akin to the expansion of the railroads in the 19th century, it was initially supported by several Upper Valley communities that would contribute to its budget.
But the promise of a regionally supported airport didn’t last. By the late 1970s, towns declined to continue funding their share of expenses, leaving Lebanon solely in charge. Airlines also came and went, with at least six different firms offering some level of service until Cape Air began flying out of the city in 2008.
In the meantime, frustration among city councilors built as airport deficits required them to transfer tax dollars to support what many residents saw as a service that disproportionately benefits the region’s wealthy elite.
Since 2009, Lebanon’s general fund has contributed more than $3.6 million to the airport. The federal grants will likely put a stop to that for at least another year, but the city’s budget writers estimate that subsidies from Lebanon taxpayers could continue in the future.
Gross — who was hired in January 2020 after serving for 12 years as an operations manager at Corpus Christi International Airport in Texas — said he’s working to prevent future airport deficits, largely by following through on the work of his immediate predecessor, Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos, who ran the airport for about a year.
It was during Christopoulos’ tenure that the city finalized new leases and usage fees, which were expected to drive up revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
City planners also began work to develop land on the airport’s west side for more than a dozen new buildings off Airport Road. Revenue generated there would pay off infrastructure improvements now underway and pay for airport expenses, Gross said.
“It’s something that’s going to take a few years to realize. but we’re incrementally working toward erasing that difference between revenue and expenses,” he said.
But, Gross acknowledged, no one really knows when the city’s work will come to fruition. While travel to tourist destinations has seen a rebound, business travel isn’t yet at pre-pandemic levels.
“I guess the question I think everyone has right now is ‘What is the new reality?’ ” Gross asked.
Businesses need to start sending their employees to meetings and conferences, and the virtual meeting that many are accustomed to might need to end before the airport can fully return to its pre-pandemic operations, Gross predicted.
There are glimmers of hope, though. Gross said there were more than 14,600 airport operations through June of this year, potentially putting the airport on track to beat 2019 figures.
Granite Air Center, which services aircraft, also reported several months of business that topped past years, he said.
For McNamara, Lebanon’s mayor, indications that a financial plan to put Lebanon Municipal Airport on track won’t come from planes but from the expanded industrial park.
If businesses express interest in moving to the property in a few months, he said, that’s a good indication of future success.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.