The US Department of Transportation (DOT) has awarded Essential Air Service (EAS) contracts to each of Boutique Air and SkyWest Airlines (operating as United Express) for operations covering the towns of Dodge City and Liberal in Kansas and North Platte and Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
The four contracts were among several that fell vacant after operator PenAir (Anchorage Ted Stevens) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August. Despite the DOT issuing Orders Prohibiting Termination of Service, PenAir suspended all operations at both Dodge City and Liberal as well as Kearney, North Platte and Scottsbluff, Nebraska, on September 10, 2017, leaving the communities with no scheduled air service.
Following the issuance of a Request For Proposals (RFP) and a subsequent scrutinization process, the DOT awarded Boutique Air and SkyWest contracts to provide essential air services to Dodge City and Liberal respectively from January 1, 2018, through to January 31, 2020. At the same time, it has also awarded SkyWest EAS contracts for both North Platte and Scottsbluff for service between February 1, 2018, through to January 31, 2020.
As such, in its decision published last week, the DOT said Boutique Air would provide 18 weekly nonstop round trips from Dodge City to Denver International using 8/9-passenger PC-12s on a two-year contract valued at USD3,621,182 per annum.
At Liberal, SkyWest, operating under the United Express banner, will operate 12 weekly nonstop/one-stop round trips to Denver using 50-seater CRJ200s, at an annual subsidy of USD3,747,998.
At North Platte and Scottsbluff, Nebraska, SkyWest will offer 12 nonstop round trips at each community to Denver International Airport also using CRJ-200 jets. The annual subsidy at North Platte is USD3,575,926 while at Scottsbluff it is USD3,152,294 per annum.
