The Grand Junction Regional Airport Authority took action at a special meeting Tuesday that could help the airport restore air service to Salt Lake City, a route that has not been flown since January 2021.
In February of 2020 the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the airport a Small Community Air Service Development Program grant to help it establish new regular service to San Francisco International Airport.
That grant provided $950,000 with a $575,000 match from the Grand Junction Regional Air Service Alliance in funding for a minimum revenue guarantee if an airline took up that service.
“We applied for a grant to add nonstop service to the San Francisco hub,” Airport Executive Director Angela Padalecki said. “So the intention was both the point to point, but also and especially the connectivity that would be provided through that hub. Throughout the application, we cited the value of the hub service we have in connecting the community and visitors through different hubs.”
Despite the grant funding, that regular San Francisco service has not materialized in the years since.
The airport still has the USDOT grant to use for that connection. However, Padalecki said it could request to have the grant amended to allow it to use that funding for Salt Lake City service, as well as San Francisco. However, the Airport Authority needs to make a formal request to amend the grant.
“Restoring connectivity to Salt Lake City and to the northwest region is our top air service development goal,” Padalecki said. “As we’ve worked with our partners at the airlines, including Delta and including Skywest Airlines … we’ve continued to talk to both. We recognize the value this grant would have in our ability to work toward restoring that service as soon as possible.”
The Grand Junction service to and from Salt Lake City had been flown by Delta Airlines for around three decades before the airline giant announced it was stopping the service in early January 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and citing a pilot shortage.
The Grand Junction Regional Airport has been searching for new carriers to help fill the gap left by Delta Airlines departure ever since. It has also seen low-cost carriers like Avelo Airlines show up in 2021 only to cancel its service a few months later. Earlier this year, Allegiant Air announced it would be leaving the Grand Junction market after 18 years. The low-cost airline has serviced the Las Vegas route since June 2006
Start-up low-cost carrier Breeze Airways has stepped in to fill some of the gaps left by other carriers departing. It flies to Orange County, California, a route once filled by Allegiant, and will begin flights to Las Vegas just days after Allegiant’s final flight to “Sin City.”
Breeze also has seasonal service to San Francisco, though it did not receive funding from the airport through the USDOT grant.
“We did look at whether using the grant would make sense for that service with Breeze,” Padalecki said. “We decided that it didn’t make sense for two reasons. Number one, Breeze is not providing connectivity to a hub. It’s just that point-to-point service … Second, that service is seasonal. It’s just summer seasonal service and twice weekly.”
The Grand Junction Airport Authority board voted in favor of requesting the change to the USDOT grant to allow it to fund air service to Salt Lake City. It has not announced any new service yet. However, Board Chairman Tom Benton said this was a step in the right direction.
“The ball has started rolling here in this process,” Benton said. “So, more to come.”