Valley airport’s commercial airline put on notice
WEYERS CAVE - The Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport's commercial airline carrier, ViaAir, has been threatened with replacement by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) due to complaints alleging poor service.
ViaAir receives an annual subsidy of $3,797,780 from the DOT to provide service to the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport, as well as airports in several other rural communities through the federal agency's Essential Air Service program, which requires "air transportation ... in a reliable way," under the U.S. Code.
But ViaAir's service hasn't been "reliable" since it began serving the airports in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the complaints mentioned in the DOT notice to the company. It alleges that ViaAir is:
"regularly making unscheduled stops (resulting in multiple missed connections), completing flight segments for which passenger bookings have been cancelled, operating frequently-delayed flights without a reason for the delay, and cancelling flights with little or no notice to operate charter flights outside of the [Essential Air Service] program."
Reasons for the delays and cancellations have not been "clearly communicated or justified" to the airports or to passengers and ViaAir hasn't responded to the airports' "repeated requests for the problems to be remedied on a permanent basis," according to the DOT notice. Plus many of the flights that were technically completed were completed outside of the scheduled times when passengers booked tickets, the airports allege, causing passengers to miss connecting flights and have to rebook tickets or pay for last-minute flight change fees.
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Based on that, the DOT notice, sent on Feb. 21, gave Via Airlines seven days to respond to the complaints, either contesting the allegations or outlining "concrete and meaningful courses of actions to improve the serious service deficiencies alleged above." The DOT notice then threatens that the agency has the right to find a replacement carrier to serve the airports where the alleged complaints occurred, including Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport.
"The Department [of Transportation] places a very high priority on helping to provide air service to small and rural communities and expects [Essential Air Service] carriers to fulfill their contractual and other legal obligations," the DOT notice said. "The communities' complaints raise serious concerns."
ViaAir responded to the letter last Friday, said Matthew Macri, ViaAir Vice President of Operations, and has since "taken some significant steps to correct irregularities."
The company has an agreement with a legacy carrier and they are in process of implementing that partnership, which will allow for single-ticket purchase for connecting flights, baggage forwarding and automatic re-booking for delayed and cancelled flights, Macri said. ViaAir has also invested more than $4 million in "maintenance activities" over the last 3 months, he said.
“We haven’t just stood idly by while this was going on," he said.
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Macri said he admits the service could have been better at Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport, but said the main reason for the issues they've had was the lack of lead time they had to set up operations there. They had only about 30 days since they received the contract from the DOT to get their flights in service, whereas 90 days would have been ideal, he said.
“We are in our growth state of our airline — it was a challenge and I think we’ve worked very hard to overcome those challenges," Macri said. “Our focus has been on, 'what do we have to do to improve the service?'”
ViaAir replaced Silver Airways as the sole carrier for Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport in November 2016 after Silver Airways struggled with flight cancellations and other issues, said Greg Campbell, executive director of the airport.
"We're still optimistic it can be a good product," he said, but they're "monitoring things closely" to make sure ViaAir follows through on its promises, as they don't want another "Silver Airways situation."
Campbell said the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport board meets Friday and will discuss this situation then.