Fuel returns to airport, operations remain out of reach

The departure left the airport without refueling and other services for private pilots who rent hangar space at the airport and the charter flights that regularly fly into the airport. Stowe Aviation had been carting in fuel since a $1.5 million Federal Aviation Administration-funded parallel taxiway was installed in 2021, and fuel has been unavailable ever since.

The Vermont Agency of Transportation hopes a new fuel farm will be ready by mid-summer.

Trini Brassard, an assistant director at the agency, said a new operator would be in place by early last summer, but that never materialized. Over the past year, she’s remained optimistic, consistently assuring the public that the agency has been close to finding a new operator at the airport.

The agency nearly closed on an agreement with Eastern Airlines, a Pennsylvania-based flight provider, but those discussions fell apart. Though the request for proposals has remained the same, Brassard said talks with a new prospect would hold them to performance goals instead of a list of required services.

In the meantime, the airport feels abandoned. Due to a clerical error, the power was off for a day this spring. The airport’s beacon light isn’t operational, and the agency may just leave it off pending federal guidance.

Quiet winter

It’s been a quiet winter at the airport, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

During Stowe Aviation’s tenure, attendants were on hand to help pilots out of their hangars and de-ice planes in the winter.

This lack of services, and not necessarily the lack of fuel access, is the reason for a precipitous decline of chartered flights to the airport over the last year, according to Brassard.

“Flights don’t necessarily rely on fuel access at the airport,” Brassard said. “What the biggest challenge we had this year with them was the services they wanted once they got there. In the summertime, you’ll see them roll in there, that won’t be a problem. In the wintertime, they want to be able to have somebody move their aircraft into a hangar.”

Robert Burley, a Vermont aviation aficionado with half a century of experience in the field, is also a neighbor who keeps a sort of unofficial watch over the tarmac. He estimated that commercial air traffic at the airport has dipped as much as 40 percent.

Dr. Bob Arnot, a national media personality from Stowe who has flown in and out of the airport since 1978, agrees that commercial traffic at the airport has fallen, and Tradewinds has suspended its route between Stowe and White Plains, N.Y, entirely.

Arnot believes in the importance of commercial airplane traffic to the Stowe community and hopes a new operator will bring it back. He’s even offered use of his hangar at the airport and to pay out of his own pocket for the services an airline would expect.

Tradewinds did not respond to a request for comment.

Burley and Arnot said the decline in commercial flights could be having an adverse effect on the local economy, concerns the Stowe Area Association partially echoed.

“Our organization has not heard any negative feedback from guests regarding reduced access to that particular airport, but, at the end of the day, the more options there are to help bring travelers to the Stowe area, the better,” said Jennifer Greene, the group’s marketing manager.

High and low

Private pilots have suffered as well. Even though services have been completely unavailable at the airport for over a year — other state-owned airports are experiencing similar troubles — the lease fee for hangar rentals is going up approximately 20 percent across the board.

Brassard said the state is required by the federal government to evaluate lease rates on a regular basis, and she said the most recent rate hike was caused by inflation.

Burley is also concerned about the placement and accessibility of a new fuel pump, which moved from its previous position in the middle of a taxiway to the far end, but Arnot doesn’t share those concerns, and said the agency has been responsive.

Brassard said the new fuel farm is compliant with federal regulation, and its design and placement was scrutinized by engineers.

While Arnot’s primarily concerned about the decline in commercial traffic, he also noted the rising expense and difficulty for small plane pilots at an airport with no operator.

Even those who can afford the expense of chartering a private jet flight are having trouble. One wealthy resident of Stowe, whom Arnot declined to name, wasn’t able get a flight into the airport all winter.

“It’s an enormous asset to the community,” Arnot said. “We’re all very, very anxious to make this airport work.”

Burley hinted that there may be another path for the airport, noting that the state deferred maintenance at its Caledonia airport for years until it was $14 million behind.

At an open house at that airport last summer, Burley said he spoke with Kyle Clark, owner of the South Burlington-based Beta Technologies, a company that’s been attempting to develop viable electricity-propelled airplanes. In this conversation, Burley said he jokingly suggested that Clark purchase the Caledonia airport, since he knew the Beta founder was in the market for one.

Agency of Transportation head Joe Flynn asked Vermont lawmakers for permission to put the Northeast Kingdom airport up for sale last month, according to VTDigger, and Beta Technologies has already expressed interest in buying.