Florence airport generates profit with grounded planes

FLORENCE — Florence Regional Airport Executive Director Hartsell Rogers has found a new way to generate revenue for the airport: storing grounded airplanes.

The airport parks unused planes for a modest fee. Rogers said there is room to park about 150 regional jets.

Rogers said the rental endeavor makes use of extra space at the airport and helps out the airlines.

“I was out in Mojave, Calif., a couple years ago and I’d noticed a lot of airports out there generate revenue by parking planes,” he said. “I began putting the word out there that the space is here.”

Eventually, a company representative contacted Rogers, saying he was considering parking some airplanes in either Florence or California.

“I said to him there is no reason to waste gas,” Rogers said. “Park them here. It’s just a way for your friendly local airport director to generate revenue.”
Parking the planes is expected to bring in thousands of additional dollars each month, Rogers said.

“So far, they’ve brought 12 planes, but there’s 38 they want to park,” he said. “We hope this is the beginning of a business we can grow. We’re just trying to rent space.”

The parked planes are painted with the Delta Air Lines emblem, although they aren’t considered Delta airplanes, said Chris Kelly, a spokeswoman for Delta Air Lines.

“All of our regional jets operate on their own regional certificates, so we aren’t involved with what is done with the planes,” she said.

Rogers said the planes are leased to Mesa Air Group, although a third party maintenance business contacted him about parking the airplanes.

“We’re dealing with a third party maintenance business that does the work on the planes for Mesa,” he said. “The planes have to be flown every week, so they have a crew here that does that.”

The planes will be in Florence one month to a year, although it is contingent on when the need for them arises again.

Mesa has partnerships with Delta Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Midwest Airlines, along with its own independent low-cost airline operations under Mesa Airlines at an Albuquerque, N.M., hub.

Mesa Air Group generates $1.4 billion in revenue each year from the airline partnerships and ticket sales.

A representative for Mesa Air Lines could not be reached for comment by press time Wednesday.

Mesa Air Group and Delta are in the midst of legal wranglings.

Delta negated a regional flying contract with a subsidiary of Mesa Air, called Freedom Airlines, earlier in the year.

On May 29, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction to block Delta from terminating the contract.

Delta is accusing Mesa of failing to complete a number of flights throughout the past six months.

On June 10, Delta terminated a contract with regional air carrier Pinnacle, saying Pinnacle’s operational performance had fallen below minimum levels required in the contract.

Kelly said Delta is in the process of refining its customer service and is ending relationships with regional carriers it says doesn’t fulfill its initiatives.

“We are making it a big priority to make sure that Delta Air Lines and our Delta Connection partners are succinct,” she said. “A big concern for us is operational dependability and customer service levels and we’ve made that clear with all of our regional partners and we’ll certainly take action if they aren’t doing that.”