Pierre panel pushes SkyWest for City Commission to approve as new airline

The city council in Watertown was expected to vote Monday to recommend SkyWest.

Pierre Mayor Steve Harding, Commissioner Jamie Huizenga, City Engineer John Childs and Mike Isaacs, manager of the Pierre Regional Airport, were the city staff members with Bohnenkamp. They were joined by Clint Pietz , head of Mustang Aviation and in charge of the FBO, the fixed-base operation integral to any airport; and John Hight, owner of Crooked Creek Outfitters, who represents the hunting and fishing interests who are a big part of the demand for passenger air service.

The same people, for the most part, were part of choosing Aerodynamics in 2016 and last summer, as it was being bought by California Pacific.

This time SkyWest offers a better option than the city has had in recent years, they say.

“It was unanimous,” Isaacs told the Capital Journal. “We weighed a lot of different factors and SkyWest clearly rose to the top.”

The plane size of SkyWest, based in St. George, Utah, but with a close partnership with Alaska Airlines, is a key factor. SkyWest had not sought to serve Pierre before under the Essential Air Service program of the U.S. Department of Transportation that subsidizes air service to small, isolated communities.

“They are the world’s largest regional airline,” Isaacs said. That includes having a fleet of 200 CRJ-200 jets as well as the best agreements and arrangements with major airlines, such as code-sharing and interline agreements for booking and baggage and overall convenience in making connecting flights.

“For customers, it will be easier for people to find tickets, more seamless for people to travel wherever they are going throughout the world,” Isaacs said.

Having only four jets hurt California Pacific Airlines when it ran into a couple of difficulties last fall, company officials said.

SkyWest representatives visited Pierre and Watertown last month after learning the communities would get a new airline service.

“They were just looking at operations here, what it’s going to take for them to get things up off the ground as quickly as possible.”

It will mean pushing some California Pacific equipment — including computers and a de-icer, which is a heavy duty Ford pickup with spray booms — out of the way, all left as CPAir left rather abruptly, dropping its keys on the desk, Isaacs said.

SkyWest was eager enough to get a quick start that it opened up applications for interested employees from former California Pacific workers before it has been awarded the federal contract, Isaacs said.

“They said they would prefer to hire locally and I know some people have already applied,” Isaacs said. “I think (SkyWest) knows that the longest period to get off the ground is to get people hired and trained.”

One woman who worked for California Pacific and for Aerodynamics Inc. said CPAir still owes her and a dozen other “ground handlers” at the Pierre airport two paychecks, or about a month's pay.

(A previous version of this story incorrectly described it as two months' pay.)

CPAir officials haven’t said much but have indicated that once they receive their last reimbursement from the federal DOT under the EAS subsidy program, their checks should be in the mail, the woman told the Capital Journal last week.

She has worked in the airline industry in Pierre for more than 20 years and until California Pacific, never missed a check, she said.

Now she’s looking for other work and asked that her name not be published. She’s not sure she wants to apply with a new airline in Pierre.

But she enjoyed the work, which involved everything from customer service, answering phones, as well as stowing baggage into airplanes, she said. “Everything but flying and fueling the planes, we did it.”