Paul Bradbury, airport director, said the terminal expansion was designed with a passenger increase in mind, and he believes Southwest will mean more passengers.

Bradbury tells the Portland Press Herald that Southwest passengers are extremely loyal, and now they can fly from Portland instead of traveling to Boston or Manchester, N.H.

The sale of Airtran to Southwest was completed in May, and Southwest announced Friday it was eliminating Airtran service from Portland and 14 other cities.

In Portland, the service is being replaced by Southwest. Bradbury tells the Portland Press Herald (http://bit.ly/wn2NNm ) that Southwest passengers are extremely loyal, and now they can fly from Portland instead of traveling to Boston or Manchester, N.H.

Expect a few jitters as airport officials face a tight window to complete the transition.

A ribbon cutting is at 9:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 30; then on Saturday is a public open house from 9 a.m. to noon, and Sunday “we go live for the outbound flights,” said Paul Bradbury, director of the Jetport.

Between Saturday, Oct. 1 and Sunday morning, Oct. 2, at 4 a.m., the Jetport will hustle to construct a ramp to connect the buildings, close the old screening checkpoint, and move JetBlue and U.S. Airways operations into the new terminal.

“I’m pretty confident it will work out, obviously there’s always nervousness, otherwise you’re not interested in the project,” Bradbury said.

In the vacated space will be 10,000 square feet of renovated space for two outbound baggage handling systems. All carriers — including United, Delta, AirTran, Continental — will be moved into the new ticketing concourse by February.

“We open on Oct. 2, what ends up happening is JetBlue and U.S. Airways ticket counters and operations space and baggage move down to the new ticketing concourse,” Bradbury explained, which will allow contractor Turner Construction of Boston to finish renovations and put in new baggage carousels.

All told, Turner is overseeing a 145,000-square-foot terminal expansion and renovation to the Jetport’s main terminal building. This project will include five additional passenger gates, a security screening checkpoint, required baggage handling equipment, elevators, revised inbound/outbound passenger circulation, an enclosed bridged connection to the parking garage over the terminal roadway, a food court and increased retail space, Turner reports on its website. The site work includes an expansion of the existing surface parking lots as well.

“We’ve been in design and planning, you could say that goes all the way back to the 1990 master plan,” said Bradbury.

At one time the largest construction project in the state, the Jetport’s $75 million terminal expansion will add 137,000 square feet of space to the existing terminal, double the number of security screening checkpoint lanes and add an outbound baggage in-line explosives detection system.

The Jetport plans to pay for nearly all of the improvements with passenger facility charges — the fees tacked on to airfares that can be used for a variety of FAA-approved projects including terminal expansion, enhancements to security or safety and noise abatement, among others. Each passenger that boards a plane at the Jetport is charged a $4.50 passenger facility charge.

“The terminal is all user funded,” Bradbury noted. “This project is being built functionally by the people who use the airport. It’s not taxpayers. … The only real stimulus funding we ended up using was for the in-line baggage system.”

The explosives detection system is linked to airport security, but Bradbury said the Jetport wasn’t singled out, although 9/11 terrorists Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari flew from Portland to Boston to carry out the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Nationally there is one level of security now at airports, and there needs to be, it doesn’t matter what airport someone goes through. … They all have to be secure,” Bradbury said.

“It doesn’t matter if you come through Portland, Maine or Portland, Ore., you’re in the system,” he said.

Jetport makes room for First Lady’s visit

The Portland Jetport scheduled its terminal-expansion ribbon cutting around another notable event in Portland — the arrival of Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama’s wife, to raise money for her husband’s re-election.

First Lady Michelle Obama is expected to attend a luncheon at a private home in Cape Elizabeth followed by a fundraising event, Obama Victory Fund 2012 — Afternoon Reception with the First Lady, at the Ocean Gateway terminal at 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30.

Paul Bradbury, director of the Jetport, said a ribbon cutting at 9:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 30, to celebrate construction of an expanded terminal at the Jetport was scheduled with the First Lady’s visit in mind. The Jetport didn’t want to compete for media attention with the First Lady’s visit to the Ocean Gateway terminal in the afternoon, he said.

About 20 area residents attended the session, arranged by committee member and South Portland City Councilor Alan Livingston. The object, to open a dialogue with the pubic, was prefaced with presentations by Jetport Director Paul Bradbury and Security and Communications Manager Jennifer Dunfee.

Attendees sat quietly through Powerpoint slides on the Jetport’s $75 million expansion (the new terminals open Oct. 2), its carrier mix (US Airways accounts for 29.7 percent of all flights), passengers served (1.69 million in 2010, down from a high of 1.76 million in 2008) and its economic impact ($868 million, annually, supporting 11,591 jobs).

But what they really wanted to know was when and how the Jetport proposed to reduce the thundering noise some area residents must endure on a daily basis. The answer the residents received – perhaps as long as five years – did not sit well with those that now live along the Jetport’s flight path.

“It really makes by house rumble,” said Richard Armstrong.

“We’re getting crop dusted on a daily basis,” said Bill Duffy.

“It’s just a tailpipe of jet exhaust into South Portland,” said Peter Frankwicz.

As Bradbury explained it, the Jetport has a solution that will divert more than 90 percent of all air traffic that now passes over the South Portland peninsula. The only problem, he said, is the Jetport can’t implement the fix without a mother-may-I from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

According to Bradbury, permission was first sought almost two years ago for a radio navigation system that would guide pilots down the Fore River to a GPS unit (to be dubbed “MAINA”) placed on Hog Island Ledge. That would make it possible for all commercial airliners to use what’s called the “harbor-view approach” now in use only during the day, under optimal weather conditions, and only for landings. That route would ensure that takeoffs, the noisiest plane activity, avoid the city entirely.

“Sounds great, doesn’t it?” asked Bradbury. “It looks brilliant. We all think it’s brilliant. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist yet.”

And, if those at the meeting thought little of the two-year wait, they were even less mollified by Bradbury’s prediction of how much longer the FAA might take to enact new procedures at the Portland Jetport.

“I’m confident it will happen within five years,” he said, eliciting an audible groan from the audience.

Although Bradbury began his talk by praising the feds for putting control of all air travel under a single administration – “that’s why it’s the safest way to travel,” he said – it fell to others to explain what else can be wrought of central control.

“Once you leave the local district and get bounced into the Washington bureaucracy, they can make Congress look fast-moving and nimble,” said Edward Suslovic , the committee’s chairman and a Portland City Councilor whose district includes the Jetport.

Bradbury pointed out that wind direction determines how planes approach and depart the Jetport. Because they must take off and land into the wind, that means 97.3 percent of all flights use runways 11 and 29, which are orientated on an east-west axis. And, although Dunfee said the Jetport tries to send planes to the west whenever possible, a good portion of the time conditions dictate that they pass directly over South Portland neighborhoods, like Knigtville, Mill Creek and Willard Square.

Pilots are instructed to “fan out,” said Dunfee, meaning some bank right or left almost as soon as they hit altitude, which lowers the number of flights that pass directly over the city. However, while that reduces the number of flights taking off over the peninsula, it also spreads the annoyance factor around.

“This is not what we want to do going forward,” she said, noting that with the radio navigation system in place, pilots could fly the S-shaped pattern down the river and out over Casco Bay through a cloud cover as low as 600 feet.

“We all agree, if you are woken up just once [by a departing place], that’s a problem,” said Suslovic. “But we can’t set policy. The FAA has reserved that for themselves.”

Bradbury said all commercial aircraft in use today has the GPS guidance equipment needed to take advantage of radio navigation flight path. The Jetport is simply waiting on the FAA to adopt a procedure and put it out to industry comment, he said.

Suslovic said the noise committee has agreed to enlist help from Maine’s congressional delegation, should the FAA prove unresponsive. However, even though the process was begun almost two years ago, the committee does not yet felt the need to employ what he called “the nuclear option.”

“Believe me, we are all impatient,” said Suslovic, “but the FAA is looking at it. We feel that they are making progress.

“I absolutely agree that the biggest noise impact is on South Portland, and that’s why our top priority as a committee has been to work on this RNAV route,” said Suslovic. “Once we get this approved and implemented, I think the folks in South Portland will see a marked difference.”

“I think it’s sad that it’s been two years that you’ve all been working so hard and so little seems to have happened,” said Diane Armstrong.

Sam Frantoni pressed Bradbury repeatedly on how long it should take to gain FAA approval of the radio navigation path, garnering little more than a “great question.”

“It’s an 18-step process, ” said Durfee “and we’re in about step three or four at this point.”

Frantoni asked for detail on each of the 18 steps, as well as a standard timeframe under which each is usually accomplished. That drew more generalizations from Bradbury.

“There is a lot of technology and mapping that goes into this,” he said. “There’s safety programming and analysis, and then the airlines get to do the same rigorous analysis.”

Bradbury added that the FAA has been sent back to the drawing board once already, after they returned with a proposed radion navigation route that “clipped” South Portland at Bug Light.

“So, it’s not like we said go and they waited two years,” he said.

But, for some in the crowd, the attempt to divert flights from the city was not only about noise.

“It’s also a health issue,” said Duffy. “There are days when I walk out of my house and it feels like I’m on the tarmac of the airport, with the reeking fumes.”

Frankwicz agreed, referencing a February 2010 health impact assessment of the Santa Monica airport prepared by UCLA.

“I am very concerned,” he said. “It’s a very alarming study talking about urban airport emissions that lead to carcinogenic risks, exposures to ultra-fine particles, which lead to inflammation of airway passages, and exposure to hydro-carbons, which are lowering IQ scores in children.

“Runway 11 goes directly over at least three or four schools,” said Frankwicz. “We are exposing our children to these health risks. And then the noise results in higher levels of physiological distress, impaired reading comprehension and memory among children.”

“I feel like I’m complaining to the wrong people,” said Duffy, who, like many in the audience, did not seem content to wait five years to be free from overflights.

“If it seems like it’s really grinding to a halt, at what point will you get in touch with our senators?” he asked.

“As long as we are making forward progress we do not want to pull the heavy hand of our congressional delegation,” answered Suslovic, “because, in certain circumstances, that can put you in limbo, as in, ‘We’ll show them.’”

But then, Suslovic seemed to indicate how, for every winner of a bureaucratic decision, there can also be losers. After all, while jets currently fan out when leaving the jetport to mitigate the impact on any one neighborhood, the projected flightpaths shown by Dunfee showed virtually every departing flight on the proposed path taking a hard right at Hog Light and flying directly over Peaks Island.

And, if continual Peaks Island flyovers might still represent “the greatest gain for the greatest number of people,” Suslovic, whether he meant to or not, seemed to draw a closer parallel with the Portland Jetport’s current status with the FAA. After all, who oils the wheel that squeaks least?

“I expect that I’ll be getting a lot more calls from Peaks Island once we implemented this,” he said. “But it’s more of a seasonal community, so in the winter there are fewer people who are going to be impacted and in the summer, well, a lot of those people don’t vote.”

Bradbury said the radio navigation process will be on the agenda for the next meeting of the noise advisory committee. That gathering kicks off at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 18, at the Jetport.

Posted by Portland Maine Airport Limo and Taxi Service Airport Car Express

More Mainers were expected to hit the roads and skies for the holiday compared with last year, reflecting national trends and a slowly improving economy.

Storms snarl travel National travel picture
Opt-Out Day a bust; weather whacks West.

The AAA travel organization estimated roughly 42.2 million people nationwide would drive more than 50 miles from home for Thanksgiving, an 11.4 percent increase over 2009. Similarly, 1.62 million will fly for the holiday, an increase of 3.5 percent over last year. And roughly 2 percent of holiday travelers will go by other means, including rail, bus and boat, AAA said.

The Maine Turnpike — the central artery into and out of the state — was expecting an overall traffic increase of 4,000 vehicles from Wednesday through Sunday, up about 1.6 percent from last year. That analysis was done by Charles Colgan, an economist at the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Southern Maine.

According to the analysis, 59,000 vehicles were expected to pass through the York Toll Plaza in both directions on Wednesday, with 32,000 heading north and 27,000 going south. Sunday is expected to be nearly as busy with 55,000 vehicles traveling in and out of Maine, including a 2 percent increase in southbound traffic or about 32,000 vehicles.

“It largely reflects just a general slight upward trend in the economy and in people’s willingness to travel,” Colgan said.

Traffic has been trending slowly upward through the second half of the year, he said, with general year-over-year increases on holiday weekends.

“This is largely a continuation of that slow but steady improvement,” said Colgan.

Despite nationwide grumbling about the Transportation Security Administration’s new body scanners and aggressive body pat-downs, officials at Bangor International Airport and the Portland International Jetport said they expected increased passenger counts and no real issues.

Neither airport has the scanning devices, which have caused passengers to protest due to the revealing nature of the images they create.

Bangor International Airport Director Rebecca Hupp said she’s expecting this week to reflect the small increases in passenger numbers the airport has seen this year.

“In Bangor, we’ve seen increases in passenger travel,” said Hupp. “We’re optimistic that travel this year will be strong [during the holidays].”

BIA passenger traffic was up 19 percent in October year-over-year. The numbers were also up in September. Those percentage jumps likely won’t continue for November, Hupp said. Allegiant added flights last November, so any increases will be smaller.

Gregory Hughes, marketing manager at the Portland Jetport, said travel ahead of the holiday is spread out a bit, even into last week. The challenge will come on the return trips, which tend to stack up, he said.

“The insanity will probably be more here on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning,” said Hughes. “Everybody is trying to get back from where they’ve been.”

The Jetport is seeing numbers roughly even with last year, Hughes said.

Management at the Greyhound station in Bangor has been “very pleased and very busy,” said Arthur Brountas, out of retirement to help out during the holiday rush. From experience, they know to increase staff and add a bus on the line down to Lewiston, said Brountas. He suggested some of the national griping about security measures at airports might help out the bus line.

“This year looks better — maybe some people aren’t taking planes,” said Brountas, laughing. “The airlines seem to be doing OK, but I’m sure we’re getting some people that don’t care to go through the process right now.”

While some nasty weather may be heading this way from the Midwest, the timing may work out for holiday travelers, said Lee Foster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou. Thanksgiving Day should be dry across the state with some flurries in the mountains. That Midwest system should be in Maine on Friday, dumping rain from Bangor south and snow and sleet in the northern parts of the state. He said 2 to 4 inches of snow may fall in some areas.

Precipitation should end by Friday evening, and the weekend won’t see any big storms, though the weather will be unsettled with a few flurries north, Foster said.

The Maine Department of Transportation, Maine State Police and AAA used the start of the holiday travel season to remind motorists of the challenges of driving in sloppy winter weather. According to an advisory they sent out, while Maine’s snowiest month is January, crash statistics show that there are more winter-weather related crashes in December than any other month as drivers are getting re-accustomed to driving in snow and ice.

One group, Environment Maine, was taking advantage of the expected jump in travel to push the Obama administration to increase fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. The group noted that about 73,000 families will drive to visit friends and family in Maine, spending about $1.63 million on gas for holiday traveling. The average mile per gallon of passenger cars is now at 26.4 mpg, and the group is pushing for 60 mpg standards.

With such standards, Mainers would save roughly $911,000 at the gas pump, or $12 per family, the group suggested.

“At Thanksgiving time, Mainers should be focused on clearing their plates, not clearing out their wallets at the gas pump,” said Nathaniel Meyer of Environment Maine in a press statement.

PORTLAND, Maine — A man who began a solo cross-country canoe trip in Portland, Ore., has completed the journey 4,300 miles later in Portland, Maine.

Alexander Martin, of Kensington, Conn., paddled the final stretch down the Presumpscot River today and arrived at Portland’s East End Beach, where family waited.

The 24-year-old says his entire trip was human powered, either by paddle or pedal. He used a bike to pull his canoe on some of the longer portages.

He made the trip in three two-month segments that started in April 2009. And he’s thinking about his next waterborne adventure, possibly the Lena River in Siberia. He says it’s described as one of the longest rivers in the world that’s not obstructed by dams.

He should have called Airport Car Express, a local Portland Maine Limo company for an easier, if not so satisfying ride !!

“If you live south of here and want to fly nonstop, there’s no doubt people will make the drive,” said David Barger.

The best way to limit that trend and encourage JetBlue to bolster its presence in Maine, Barger added, is for Mainers to fly out of Portland.

Barger was in Portland as part of a 10th anniversary tour that’s taking him to each of the 61 cities JetBlue serves. He used the opportunity to talk about how Portland fits into the airline’s growth plans, congestion at JetBlue’s hub in New York City and what type of service will be offered between Portland and Orlando this winter.

Barger visited an airport in the midst of a major expansion, one that has largely weathered the recession and is on track to fly roughly 1.7 million passengers this year, on par with 2009.

Since arriving in Portland four years ago, JetBlue Airways has become a key contributor to the vitality of Maine’s largest airport. It has five daily flights in and out of Portland to its new terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. It carried 294,000 passengers last year, roughly 17 percent of all Portland traffic.

JetBlue began serving Portland at a critical time. The city had just lost its only low-cost carrier, when Independence Air went under. Many Maine fliers were traveling to Boston, or to Manchester, N.H., to take advantage of discount fares being offered by Southwest Airlines.

The “JetBlue effect,” as it was called, helped reverse those trends. Legacy airlines such as USAirways and Delta began trimming fares to New York City – the jetport’s top destination – as soon as JetBlue’s expansion was announced.

“I don’t think it’s overstating it to say JetBlue made a transformational change at the jetport,” said Steve Hewins, vice president for travel at AAA Northern New England. “I honestly think it has been a major factor in the jetport’s resurgence.”

JetBlue’s flights to New York, and AirTran Airways trips to Baltimore-Washington, D.C., help maintain competition for Portland’s top two destinations, according to Paul Bradbury, the jetport’s director. And while JetBlue isn’t as aggressive with pricing as it once was, in Bradbury’s view, it offers a value experience for many fliers, such as providing video screens on each seat and not charging for the first checked bag.

“They have a very good product at a reasonable price,” he said.

JetBlue has been able to maintain that product at a time when some other airlines have struggled. The publicly-traded company was profitable last year. And while it showed a loss in the first quarter of this year, the airline bounced back in the second quarter with record revenues and highest-ever operating income. It also has been ranked first in overall satisfaction for low-cost airlines for the past six years by J.D. Powers and Associates, just ahead of Southwest.

JetBlue’s competition with Southwest is now unfolding in Boston, where JetBlue recently has become the top carrier at Logan International Airport. JetBlue is constrained from growing much in the busy New York City airspace, and has chosen Boston as a place to diversify its route system. It will begin offering service this November between Boston and Reagan/National in Washington, D.C., Portland’s second most popular destination.

“That’s where the resources are going,” Barger said of Logan.

More travelers are discovering this, Hewins said, which puts more pressure on Portland

Hewins noted this example: A Maine traveler who booked a flight this week to Los Angeles on Sept. 2, could catch an evening flight on JetBlue from Portland through JFK to Long Beach, Calif., for $399. A direct flight from Boston was listed at $296.

“It’s the kind of thing where you could wind up competing against yourself,” Hewins said.

JetBlue’s expansion in Boston is being watched closely by Bradbury.

Average fares at Logan remain higher than those in Portland, he said, but Portland can’t match the schedule frequency or the advantage of direct flights out of Boston. The growth of reliable, hourly bus service between Portland and Logan’s terminals leads some fliers to take advantage of what Boston has to offer, at Portland’s expense.

Bradbury would like to see JetBlue offer a direct flight from Portland to Washington, D.C., but Barger said that won’t make economic sense now. He wants Boston service to mature first.

And Barger said JetBlue is still considering what type of flights will link Portland to Orlando this winter. JetBlue presently offers a direct flight on Saturdays. Last winter it competed with a comparable direct flight offering by AirTran. Maine vacations in Florida also were reduced by the lingering recession.

“It was good, but it wasn’t great,” Barger said of the economics.

Overall, Barger said, Portland performs well for JetBlue, but any future expansion will be driven by sustained demand.

“My message is, we’re looking for local support,” he said.

The Portland Press Herald says the $3.6 million road is part of the most ambitious expansion in the airport’s history and the largest construction project now under way in the state.

The new one-way road runs below ground level and will be the same elevation as the new terminal entrance.

The expansion will nearly double the size of the terminal, adding 137,000-square-feet of space, three gates, eight passenger screening lanes and a new baggage-handling system.

The project is due to be finished in 2012.

The project is scheduled to be completed in October 2010 and be operational in July 2011. The company behind the project is Norfolk Ram Group LLC, a Plymouth-based environmental engineering firm.

The airport estimates that its oil consumption will be reduced by more than 100,000 gallons per year, reducing energy costs by an estimated 80 percent. The project ultimately will save more than $10 million in oil usage costs during the life of the system, and will pay for itself in three years, according to the airport.

The installation will consist of a total of 120 boreholes, 500 feet deep, adding up to more than 60,000-feet of ground loop coil. The Voluntary Airport Low Emissions program of the FAA is funding the project.

The installation is part of a $75 million terminal expansion project at the airport.

“The launch today of twice-daily flights from Toronto to Memphis, Cincinnati, Syracuse and Portland, Maine, reinforces Air Canada’s position as the leading transborder carrier between Canada and the U.S.,” Ben Smith, executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in a statement Monday.

The announcement is part of Air Canada¹s ongoing strategy to secure the top spot in the competitive domestic market, the company said. The airline has ramped up its daily flight service to California and Phoenix in recent weeks.

Monday’s new additions will bring Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz and its tier three partners up to a total of 233 daily flights to 55 U.S. destinations from six Canadian airports.

Rival carrier WestJet is exploring code-sharing agreements that would boost its U.S. services after a deal with Southwest Airlines fell through last month.

Portland Maine Airport (PWM) is serviced by the Maine Limo Company Airport Car Express which also provides local taxi service to the Sebago Lake, Windham, Naples and Casco areas.

Plans were presented to the Portland City Council Finance committee on Monday night. The renovation is ambitious. There will be a 137,000 square foot addition to the existing terminal, doubling its size. Three new gates will go in, which will allow another carrier to fly out of the Jetport.

Highlighting the project will be four additional security screening lanes, bringing the total to eight, and new explosive detecting equipment will be provided through a 9 million dollar grant from the Transportation Safety Administration. Jetport Director Paul Bradbury says those additional security lanes will be critical to getting travelers in the air during the busiest time of day.

“Just to service the customers we have now in the peak hours in the morning push, we have insufficient gates and insufficient security screening,” says Bradbury.

The last major renovation of the Jetport took place in 1995, and there have been several smaller projects since. In those 15 years, Jetport usage has gone up by more then 60%. The numbers continue to climbing. While cities like Boston and Manchester have seen a 10% drop in air traffic over the past several years, Portland is up by the same amount.

“The jetport is the economic engine for the region, so its critical that we invest in it its no coincidence that three of the states largest employers are within a stone throw of the jetport,” says Bradbury.

The price tag is high, about 75 million dollars — but none of that money comes out of the city budget. The city council will vote on the plan next month. If passed, construction would begin this spring, lasting for 22 months. The project is expected to employ an average of 100 people per day.