August 29, 2006

Business 101

There are two basics in business--Revenues and Expenses. In the case of ORH, the expenses now exceed revenues by $2,300,000 annually. You need to do two things 1) cut expenses or 2) increease revenues to reduce this deficit. I will leave it up to others to cut expenses but the goal of this blog is to make the airport a realized asset (increasing revenues).

What sources of revenues does an airport have?

  1. Commercial Airlines
  2. General Aviation (GA)
  3. Lease or Sale of available land to businesses
  4. Terminal Space
  5. Parking Revenues

Until we get people back at ORH, we need to table parking revenues and offer FREE PARKING. Now that Allegiant has pulled out of ORH (and nowhere else), we can forget about revenues from the Commercial Airlines for now because nobody is coming short-term.

The past couple of days a few people have commented that GA is the future of ORH. This blog never said it wasn't, although the emphasis has been on commercial airlines since that is the most tangible return to people like me.

I do not want ORH to close, but right now we need to maximize the returns on General Aviation and the development of ancillary business at ORH to reduce the $2,300,000 annual shortfall or it will in fact close. In the future I will keep looking the potential of future airlines coming to ORH but the emphasis will be on items of General Aviation, FBO's, hangar space, RFP's etc. Lastly all of those who have much more knowledge then me on these matters should use this blog as a means to educate the tax-payers. If you do not, tax-payers will not keep subsidizing any entity at a cost of approximately $200,000 per month.

One question are VLJ's (operations like Linear Air) General Aviation or Commercial Aviaiton?

2 comments:

Joe Gargery said...

I don't think anyone expects ORH to turn a profit.

The question is "Does it make more sense to lose $2,300,000 to operate an airline capable airport (Part 139 certified), or lose $100,000 to operate a General Aviation Only airport?"

I wonder what kind of revenue ORH received from Allegiant. I've never seen any numbers published.

I do know that the airport 'found' more revenue by renting an office to the TSA than they projected to receive by operating a parking lot.

Anonymous said...

Charley, you mentioned a "flowage fee" paid to City for fuel pumped at ORH (as well as a 5% tax). Any idea what this fee is per gallon ( or per whatever) or %'age and who pays it , the FBO or Alleg.?

Also what is the landing fee per touchdown and is it fixed or variable and if variable, based on what factors?

I ma just trying figure what we made every time Alleg landed and fueled up ...vs... what we are not going to making come 9-03.

My thinking is could we have kept them here if we refuned to them (council approved I assume) all or most of what they paid us everytime they touched down here?



I figure the fuel tax alone is 5-600$ per stop assuming 2000 gals @ $5+ (per another poster)