State proposes fees for aircraft landing at Deadhorse Airport

The Alaska Department of Transportation on Wednesday proposed levying a fee on planes landing at the Deadhorse Airport, the aviation hub for the oil industry on the North Slope.

If imposed, the landing fee would set Deadhorse apart from the nearly 300 other airports owned by the state in rural Alaska. While the vast majority of rural airports serve settled communities, many of them poor, air traffic at Deadhorse is dominated by the transport of employees and equipment for oil companies and their contractors.

The proposed fee would apply to planes whose maximum allowed weight at takeoff exceeds 6,000 pounds, applied at a rate of $2 for every 1,000 pounds. So an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 would incur a fee of about $350, while a smaller Cessna Caravan used by Ravn Air Cargo would pay $16 per landing.

The state already has landing fees in place at the international airports in Anchorage and Fairbanks. As for the possibility of such fees at other state-owned airports in rural Alaska, DOT has not ruled it out.

"We're constantly exploring all ideas that will help us keep our system healthy, but there are no concrete plans to charge anyone else anything at this time," said Troy LaRue, division operations manager for statewide aviation.

Bob Hajdukovich, Ravn Alaska CEO, is not pleased with the newly proposed regulation. During the public comment period, which ends April 16, he plans to argue that the fee should apply only to planes weighing more than 100,000 pounds and containing more than 30 seats. Such requirements would effectively exempt Ravn's planes from the fee.

Hajdukovich reasons that although he benefits from the services provided by the state at the airport -- fire and rescue, security, landing lights, snow removal and deicing, parking, and tie-downs -- his smaller planes don't necessarily require them and therefore shouldn't be subject to the fee.

ADVERTISEMENT

"All those services exist and it's a great benefit, but payment should be on a per-use basis," he said.

Ravn, an Anchorage-based carrier that brings in $160 million in annual revenues, would face $50,000-$75,000 in extra expenses each year, he said. Hajdukovich said he would make up for the potential shortfall by bumping up ticket prices for destinations his company serves across the state.

Matt Atkinson, co-owner of Warbelow's/Air Arctic in Fairbanks, said the fee would work out to about $14 per landing for his planes. The company has no plans to pass along the extra cost to customers in the Interior Alaska villages it serves; instead, it would be tacked on only to the cost of Warbelow's tours to the Arctic Ocean, which include charter flights to the Deadhorse Airport.

"We intend to keep the increase in fees route-specific. Everyone is very rate-sensitive in the rural areas because expenses are so high," Atkinson said.

Like Hajdukovich, Atkinson believes his company is not a heavy user of the infrastructure at Deadhorse. And although his company has a plan for absorbing the fee, he said that if other similar operators are strongly against it, "then we'd make sure those points are communicated to the state."

As of Wednesday, Alaska Airlines, the largest carrier operating in Deadhorse, had not yet taken a position on the transportation department's proposal, said company spokeswoman Halley Knigge.

DOT has no firm projection of the benefit to state coffers and is waiting for a public comment period to decide how to manage a collection system and how to use any revenues collected, LaRue said.

"Projected revenue will depend on rates and activity," LaRue said.

DOT will hold public meetings in Anchorage and Fairbanks on the Deadhorse landing fee proposal.

"We have a pretty savvy public and it's amazing to hear the ideas that come out of these processes," LaRue said. "We will try to base our decisions for the health of our system on those ideas."

Contact Jeannette Lee Falsey at jfalsey@alaskadispatch.com.

Jeannette Lee Falsey

Jeannette Lee Falsey is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. She left the ADN in 2017.

ADVERTISEMENT