PIERRE, (KCCR) — Flights to Minneapolis/St. Paul from Pierre Regional Airport will be ending in about a month. Airport Commissioner to the Pierre City Commission Jamie Huizenga says officials with the city and Denver Air Connection, the city’s Essential Air Service provider never had a minimum enplanement number to kept the flights…
Hitting 10-thousand passengers is a requirement for E-A-S airports to one, stay in the program and two, get federal money for airport improvements. Pierre’s average yearly enplanements the last two years was 14-thousand, 762. Huizenga says Pierre would have cleared the 10-thousand benchmark maintaining Minneapolis…
Huizenga says the failure of the Minneapolis flight is not a coffin for the idea of flights east out of Pierre….
E-A-S agreements are between the United States Department of Transportation and bidding airlines with cities allowed to give a preference to which submitted proposal works best for that city. Pierre to Minneapolis flights end June 9th.
