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With Delta recently cancelling its service and a master plan in the works, the future of the Hilton Head Island (HHH) Airport remains...
Kathy Mason has been feeling the effects of the ever-changing and tenuous flight options at the Hilton Head Island Airport.
Beyond her role as a travel consultant with Valerie Wilson Travel — where she’s had to shuffle clients’ travel plans for the past month after Delta announced it would no longer offer service at the airport — she’s also a traveler.
And that’s how she found herself stuck at the Charlotte airport on a trip back from Maine late this summer, waiting out a long delay to get back home due to mechanical problems on a US Airways Express flight. Her flight to Hilton Head was cancelled and the airline had to divert another plane — one small enough to land on the island’s short runway — to carry the passengers home. Eight hours passed before she finally made it back to the island.
“What worries me is that not only has Delta pulled out, but US Air might too,” Mason said. “I think as a premier destination we need the airport and we need to be able to offer that to tourists and clients and everybody else.”
Mason’s concerns reflect a common and unsettling fear on the island that the only major airport in this part of the state could soon be made obsolete by changing industry trends. The news last month that Delta was again pulling its four daily flights to and from Atlanta starting Nov. 2 because they aren’t profitable enough added more fuel to an already raging public debate over the airport’s future.
But still, there’s no indication that US Airways Express, soon to be the sole commercial carrier at the airport, is planning any changes to service. Top county officials say they’ve received repeated assurances that the airline is not planning to pull flights in the near future.
After years of heated debate, the future of the airport could finally be determined next year when detailed master plan results are released. Work is already underway on the major engineering process that will finally determine just what courses of action are even available for the airport. After that, the debate becomes more of a soul-searching one: Should Hilton Head be a community that caters to business and travelers seeking the most convenience by getting a bigger airport, or should it try to stay a quiet community with enough amenities to still entice crowds to come by car?
Updating the master plan
There’s no doubt that the limitations of the airport’s small runway contributed directly to Delta’s decision. The airline made the same move last year to end its flights during the off-season, but eventually restarted them in the spring. It’s too early to say whether that can happen again by next season. The airport’s 4,300-foot runway limits the number of passengers Delta can carry on each plane because fully loaded planes would be too heavy to get off the runway in time.
“We are going to continue to monitor that market,” Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliot said. “Should the operating conditions improve, (and) the demand still exists, we would evaluate that option.” Elliot wanted to clarify that their decision was based largely on the runway.
“The overall operations of the facility are perfectly fine. But that comment is specific to the runway.”
Much of the debate over the airport has played out in public battles, sometimes pitting business and tourism interests against neighborhood preservationists. But the tone and nature of the debate is about to change now that the airport’s first major update to its master plan in many years is officially underway. The plan aims to clear up the misconceptions and dubious claims about the facility’s future: Can the runway even physically be expanded on the site? What are the financial ramifications if the island loses all commercial service? Are there other options for small planes that can land on the runway in its current length?
The master plan consultants, Columbia-based Talbert & Bright, Engineering and Planning Consultants, started the process in August, holding public workshops and distributing surveys to gather public opinion on the airport. It asked participants basic questions, including how often they use the airport, what improvements they’d like to see and their general impressions of the facility. The response to the surveys indicates the level of intense interest in the matter.
Consultant Judy Elder-Lincke said she has been deluged with e-mails. The firm received 214 surveys from members of the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce alone, she said. “We just wanted to make sure we were addressing all of the issues, so that’s why we opened it to the public.”
According to the initial results, 76 percent of the more than 800 people surveyed had a favorable opinion of the airport and roughly the same amount want to see the airport grow or improve. About 46 percent said the runway length is the major drawback at the facility, while 32 percent said the drawbacks are limited carrier choices and non-competitive pricing.
Now, the consultants are wading into the heart of the study: geographical surveys, emergency operations plans, researching environmental and noise considerations, forecasts of future activity and, finally, drawing up a layout plan for the future airport and figuring out the financial feasibility of any proposals.
It’ll take a year before the master plan is wrapped up, meaning that by this time next fall, the county will be dealing with the fallout from whatever the results are.
County Councilman Rick Caporale, the council’s liaison to the board that oversees the Hilton Head airport and Beaufort County Airport on Lady’s Island, thinks the study will conclude that extending the runway is the best solution.
“There is no question that most people, including most (County Council) members, do want to preserve commercial service,” Caporale wrote in an e-mail. “What we need to know is just how much we can extend the runway on the current footprint. If the (master plan) concludes that we need to expand the physical footprint, we will of course be faced with a long and loud political, and perhaps, legal battle.”
The loudness of the debate is something the county is preparing for. Already over the past few years, public meetings of the airport board and Town Council have occasionally been tinged with vitriol as both sides stake their ground. Some people in the surrounding native island community view the airport as a loud intrusion into the neighborhood. Members of the St. James Baptist Church on Beach City Road worry that if the runway were expanded, the 123-year-old church would be forced to relocate.
On the other side of the debate, a coalition of business owners, pilots and travelers have criticized the county for not doing enough to protect and foster the airport. They say airport management has been lax in taking care of issues — like the overgrown trees that protrude into flight paths — and monitoring the facility’s finances. Town officials will be involved, too. They enacted a zoning change in 2007 that essentially forces the county to get the town’s approval before making any major changes to the runway.
The county is girding for the outcome of the study by trying to make the process inscrutable.
“What we’re first and foremost preparing to do with this master plan at the Hilton Head airport is to have as much transparency in the process as we possibly can with the various interested parties,” county Administrator Gary Kubic said. “Credibility is key.”
If securing more travelers by air were the only concern, expanding the runway makes sense. According to the state Aeronautic Commission, Beaufort County is one of the only major population areas of the state that’s more than 20 miles from a runway of at least 5,000 feet. Of the six commercial airports in South Carolina, the Hilton Head runway is the shortest. A 2009 customer survey for the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport showed that 39 percent of passengers landing in Savannah were bound for Hilton Head, more than any other destination in the survey, even higher than the 20 percent who were bound for downtown Savannah.
The aeronautics commission has identified the need for a bigger airport somewhere in the region. In a recent report, the commission says that while US Airways Express has no published plan to eliminate the small Dash-8 planes it uses on the island, the entire industry is shifting away from that old technology.
“There is a potential future need to accommodate increased commercial service to the region generally, and Hilton Head specifically, and a transition to regional jets by the carriers,” the report says.
The commission’s conclusion, however, is to work toward building a larger regional airport in Ridgeland instead of expanding the Hilton Head airport. That idea has yet to get past a conceptual proposal stage.
As for travelers, the clients at Kathy Mason’s agency have been letting their frustrations be known about the lack of options at the Hilton Head airport. If there’s one wreck on U.S. 278 in Bluffton, someone bound for the Savannah airport will probably miss their flight, she said. Some of her clients will only fly out of the small island facility; others specifically avoid it.
“They’re scared of little planes,” she said. “Why they think a big plane won’t fly as good as a little one, I don’t know.”
The arguments in favor of or against expansion at the airport have changed little over the past few years a nd range from concerns about disaster recovery and maintenance of the thousands of overgrown trees on the property. But by this time next year, with master plan in hand, the county, critics and supporters will have concrete data and new perspective on the issue. After that, the soul searching begins.
