Drive 5 hours or fly 20 minutes? Remote towns suffer from lack of year-round flights

The welcome sign at Provincetown Municipal Airport. Commercial flights are not available from fall until spring so only private planes fly in and out of the airport during the off-season. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

So Castellana occasionally prefers to fly, but he can only do that about half the year. The reason: Cape Air, the sole airline serving Provincetown Municipal Airport, stopped offering year-round passenger flights to and from Boston two winters ago, calling them unprofitable. For Castellana and many other Provincetown residents, the loss is significant, since flying to Boston takes only 20 minutes in the air and the terminal is just a few minutes from the town center.

Yet town voters last month rejected a measure that would have provided Cape Air a subsidy to restore off-season flights. So unless you come by private plane, you can only fly to Provincetown from spring till fall.

Provincetown's ongoing effort to restore year-round air service is a microcosm of how difficult it can be to get commercial flights in isolated places. Many parts of the U.S. have no passenger air service, or only seasonal options. Meanwhile, a federal program called Essential Air Service, which pays airlines to operate in small, rural communities, is on the Trump administration's chopping block.

The welcome lounge and offices for Cape Air are empty at the Provincetown Municipal Airport. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

Most Americans who live in remote places want the option of flying for its speed and convenience, and airports can be economic engines that drive business and tourism. But flight routes to out-of-the-way areas are often money losers for airlines, since passenger demand can be low and erratic. As a result, attracting commercial air service often requires local, state or federal subsidies, which are increasingly hard to secure in an era of government belt-tightening.

"The challenge is really around the demand at acceptable revenue levels so that the service is sustainable," said John Twiss, Cape Air's vice president of planning, "and I think this is a problem across the country."

Indeed, more than three-quarters of U.S. airports have reduced their number of flights in recent years, and more than a dozen have lost commercial air service entirely, according to the Regional Airline Association, a trade group. It calls that downward trend an "air service crisis" that risks becoming an "air service collapse."

The declines are due to a mixture of factors, including reduced passenger demand during the pandemic, a pilot shortage, and increased costs for fuel, labor and maintenance. Combined, that "poses an existential threat to small community air service," the RAA says.

To bring back off-season flights, Provincetown voters were asked to approve a $332,000 "minimum revenue guarantee" for Cape Air that would have ensured a set amount of income for the airline in return for operating year-round, which it had done for more than three decades. The money would have come from a property tax increase, which turned off many residents.

"I didn't think the taxpayer should have that burden," said Catherine Skowron, a former long-time Provincetown resident who now lives in neighboring Truro and voted no on the subsidy. "If I want to start a business, maybe there are some loans I can get, but I don't go ask the taxpayers to fund my business so I can make a living, you know?"

Catherine Skowron is a former long-time Provincetown resident who now lives in neighboring Truro. She voted against the subsidy to restore off-season flights. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

Provincetown resident Tim Kanaley also voted no, worrying about a slippery slope for other seasonal businesses.

"Does that mean that a hotel or a B&B that is saying, 'Well, we might go out of business because we don't get enough business in the off-season. Now we want a subsidy' -- would that snowball? How far could that potentially go?"

Kanaley also said the flights "tend to be relatively expensive and therefore only appeal to a specific population," which he identified as "the wealthy people who are living in town."

Provincetown resident Christine Barker, a local real estate developer, voted yes. She says off-season flights could help the town build a year-round tourism economy that would create much-needed jobs. In the off-season, many full-time residents struggle to eke out a living working as artists and commercial fishermen.

A fisherman lowers lobster traps onto a boat at MacMillian Pier in Provincetown. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

Not having continuous air service is "disastrous because it's just too hard to get here," Barker said. "Without an airline to bring people in, people are not going to come in here in the off-season for a weekend from New York or Connecticut or Washington or New Jersey. They're not going to drive all of those hours just for a weekend."

The vote split town officials, too.

Provincetown's Town Manager, Alex Morse, voted for the subsidy, noting that year-round flights benefit not only affluent vacationers, but residents who want to fly to Boston for medical appointments, remote work, family visits, and connecting international flights.

"it's never good to lose a key part of your infrastructure," Morse said, "and it becomes more difficult for people to call this place home year-round when you have less and less connectivity to the rest of the country."

Provincetown's Finance Committee recommended against the subsidy on numerous grounds, including using property taxes to fund it, and because only Provincetown residents would pay for it yet residents of surrounding towns would also use the flights.

The sign for the Provincetown Municipal Airport with the National Park Service Race Point Beach ranger station in the distance. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

"It's a great airport -- we love it and support it as a town asset," said Finance Committee chairman Mark Bjorstrom, "and we were all pretty distraught when [Cape Air] pulled out two years ago and just went to seasonal [service]."

But he said he doesn't consider giving an airline a subsidy the same as investing in local infrastructure like roads and bridges.

"If we were building another hangar or another landing strip, that is infrastructure," Bjorstrom said. "But that's not what this is. This is a private enterprise that we would be subsidizing."

Ultimately, Provincetown voters rejected the subsidy. Town officials are now pursuing other types of local, state and federal funding, including a U.S. Department of Transportation initiative called the Small Community Air Service Development Program.

Provincetown is not eligible for Essential Air Service (EAS), a federal program that subsidizes flights in more than 170 communities nationwide, because the town is considered too close to Logan Airport in Boston and a different Cape Cod airport, in Hyannis, Massachusetts, to qualify. That program is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which calls its spending "out of control" and has proposed slashing its nearly $700 million dollar budget by more than half.

People walk down Commercial Street in Provincetown. The city balloons from 3,500 residents to 60,000 when tourists visit in the summer. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

EAS has long been criticized for being inefficient and costly, a reputation documented by the research of Tony Grubesic, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside.

"The biggest problem is that a lot of these airlines get subsidized, but there isn't a whole lot of customer interest in flying on those Essential Air Service flights, so what ends up happening is that they fly nearly empty, sometimes empty planes, between point A and point B," Grubesic said. "Literally nobody on those planes."

Still, the program has historically been immune to budget cuts, and Grubesic assumes it will remain untouchable.

"If you're a senator from New York or Nebraska or Kansas," he said, "having subsidized airports is a feather in your cap," so state elected officials want the flights because they please voters and attract economic development opportunities.

"If you want me to make a bet on this, I would say nothing's getting cut, because it doesn't matter if you're a red state or if you're a blue state," Grubesic added. "They all love getting this money."

For now, Cape Air's Provincetown service remains seasonal, running from May 14 to November 2. Provincetown also has ferry service to Boston, but it, too, ceases operations during winter.

People walk on Commercial Street. Some locals believe if Provincetown was accessible in the off-season, the area could host more revenue-generating events during the quieter months. Agata Storer for NPR

Agata Storer for NPR

If Provincetown were more accessible year-round, Barker, the local real estate developer, envisions a thriving off-season community that could more easily host winter weddings, board meetings, retreats for writers and artists, and other revenue-generating events.

"There's no reason why, as one of the richest nations on the planet, we can't figure out a way to have small planes servicing these areas," she said.

Castellana, who recently became a volunteer member of the town's Airport Commission in hopes of restoring off-season flights to Provincetown, agrees.

"Year-round air service would bring more year-round tourism and other kinds of business into the town," he said, "which translates to economic growth and employment."