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To the Journal editor:
To candidates seeking to represent the Upper Peninsula, the election season brings familiar promises: economic development, new employers, stronger tourism, better healthcare and more reasons for young people to stay.
So here is a practical question for every candidate making those promises:
What will you do to improve commercial air service at Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport?
This is not about ticket prices. It is about whether flights are available and whether they can be counted on. When only a handful of flights arrive and depart each day, one cancellation can strand travelers or cost them another day. Limited schedules make even routine trips unnecessarily difficult.
That affects more than vacation plans. Reliable air service matters to patients and medical professionals, Northern Michigan University, local employers, visiting speakers and performers, families, tourists and businesses deciding whether the Upper Peninsula is a practical place to invest.
Whether we welcome it or not, the Upper Peninsula is relying on tourism as an economic engine. Communities and state agencies spend considerable effort promoting the region as a destination. But we cannot seriously pursue a tourism-based economy while making the region so difficult to reach. Visitors with limited time may simply choose someplace with more dependable transportation.
Marquette Sawyer is the only commercial airport in the Upper Peninsula without support through the federal Essential Air Service program. At the same time, federally subsidized airports elsewhere in the UP are competing for the same limited supply of regional aircraft. Marquette once had more daily flights, including service to Minneapolis. We should be asking why that changed and what can be done about it.
Local organizations and airport officials have already done much of the homework. Their research indicates that more than half of the air-travel demand generated in the Marquette area is leaking to other airports. Recapturing even a portion of those travelers could help support another daily flight.
County candidates should say whether they will make airline recruitment and reliable service a measurable priority. State candidates should explain whether they support funding to establish or restore rural routes. Congressional candidates should tell us whether they will pursue changes to federal policy, support air-service-development grants and address Marquette's disadvantage under the current system.
No one expects government to order an airline to add flights. But government can help provide start-up guarantees, pursue grants, organize major employers, bring airlines to the table and treat dependable air service as the essential infrastructure it is.
You cannot promise a bigger, better-connected Upper Peninsula or an economy increasingly dependent upon visitors while ignoring how people get here or how the rest of us get out.
So, candidates: What, specifically, will you do?