A firm that promised to quantify the number of potential airline passengers who are driving between cities in Idaho won the opportunity Wednesday to complete a study to see how the state can improve air service.
Mead & Hunt will charge no more than $50,000 to identify how Lewiston, Moscow, Boise, Coeur d’Alene, McCall, Twin Falls, Pocatello, Idaho Falls and Sun Valley can be more connected with air transportation.
The firm was selected by the Idaho Legislature’s Intrastate Commercial Air Service Committee and is the same business assisting the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport with its efforts to add round-trip Denver flights.
The committee was formed partly because none of Idaho’s larger cities, including Lewiston and Moscow, have direct flights to the state’s capitol, Boise. Lewiston’s ended two years ago with the departure of Alaska Airlines’ Horizon Air.
Mead & Hunt brings a unique set of expertise to the project, said Boise Airport Director Rebecca Hupp, who serves on the committee that interviewed six firms Wednesday.
“We heard from many of the (firms) that we cannot do traditional data and traditional tracking, because it does not exist,” Hupp said. “I think the GPS data and the cellphone data could be extremely valuable ... in this study.”
Standard air travel studies won’t work in this instance, because they don’t show travelers who are driving instead of boarding airplanes, said Jeffrey Hartz of Mead & Hunt.
“(We) acquire data from where people are based, where they work as well as where they’re traveling to with real-time pings,” Hartz said. “So we’re able to see if they originated in the Pullman and Moscow area and they drove down to Boise.”
Using a fresh strategy was an approach backed by a number of the consultants who were interviewed.
Mike Boyd of the Boyd Group, who assisted Lewiston with getting its Salt Lake City flights, warned the committee about how tough its goal is.
Anything that will succeed in the long term, Boyd said, will likely involve creating a brand new model, because the airline industry has evolved so much and is losing volume for a multitude of reasons. He pointed to Wednesday’s meeting as an example.
A decade ago, anyone who wanted to participate would have needed to be in a single place, likely Boise. But many of those attending the meeting did so from computers in their homes or offices in different parts of Idaho and the United States, saving time, fuel and money.
An economic analysis might show an expansion of intrastate flights won’t work, or it could show it’s needed but will cost, say, $1 million — yet will bring enough added benefits to merit moving forward, Boyd said.
“If that’s the case, you’re going to have to put (up) with people saying, ‘Why are you going to support ... an airline that is going to lose money?’ ” he said. “For the same reasons we’re supporting bridges.”
Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.
