Essential Air Service is a program by the United States Department of Transportation that provides a subsidy to airlines that serve eligible communities. There are currently 115 airports in the 32 contiguous states that are part of the Essential Air Service program, as well as 60 airports in Alaska. This write-up will be mostly concerned with the program as it applies in the Lower 48.

The Essential Air Service program was created at the same time as the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. The Airline Deregulation Act let air carriers decide what airports they wanted to serve, and at what rates. Since the DOT could no longer order airlines to fly to smaller airports, it came up with a plan to pay them, instead. The formula it uses to decide which communities are eligible is rather complex, and depends on the distance to a larger hub airport. Airlines are paid for flights, not for passengers, so there is no particular reason to encourage full flights, except for the fact that the subsidy is supposed to be less than $200 per passenger, although there are many exceptions to that. The airplanes involved can range from 8 seat propeller aircraft to mid-sized jets carrying up to 50 people. Most of them fly to the nearest hub airport, although sometimes they fly to a more distant hub airport. By the regulations of the act, they all have at least 2 round trips a day. The subsidies per airport range from a low of $800,000 a year for Butte, Montana to a high of $6,800,000 per year for Presque Island, Maine. Altogether, at present, the program costs $316,000,000 a year.

With those basic facts about the program, let me add some commentary. Depending on someone's ideological leanings, this program could be seen as way for the government to provide a vitally-needed service, or as an expensive and inefficient way to prop up services that are redundant, and unnecessary. It could also be seen as a way to popularize and subsidize a fossil fuel dependent industry that already causes environmental degradation and negative externalities like noise pollution. But before we spend too much time on those thorny issues, I should also put in a piece of more prosaic commentary, which are that the communities that receive Essential Air Service seem to fit in to two categories: ones of convenience, and one of necessity. A good example of a community that seems to be in the program due to convenience is Macon, Georgia, which has subsidized service to Baltimore-Washington International Airport, despite Macon being located 90 miles away from Atlanta, Georgia and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, often the world's busiest airport. On the other hand, Wolf Point, Montana is about 300 miles away from Billings, Montana, which has a much smaller airport than Atlanta, and is about 600 miles away from Denver or Minneapolis, places that have airports with international flights. Someone in Macon, Georgia has other ways to get to an airport, while someone in the highline of Montana does not. The list of Essential Air Service communities might be surprising at times, since many communities in places like New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois are included, while the entire Pacific Northwest has only one such airport (in Pendleton, Oregon). Whatever someone's ideological viewpoints on the matter are, there is practical differences between what type of access people in Decatur, Illinois have without a subsidized airport (drive 40 miles to Springfield) versus what happens when people in Glasgow, Montana don't have an airport (drive for five hours to Billings). The program makes more sense in terms of people living in Frontier and Remote areas that might have little access to basic services, than to people in exurban communities where it is merely a convenience.

But even as I write that, I don't know the story of each one of the 115 communities that receive Essential Air Service. It could be that in many of these cities, especially ones in the Eastern US that have been losing population, the lack of an airport might be the straw that broke the camel's back, and that removing this amenity could lead to a feedback loop where people leave the community. Air travel can be very important for medical and educational reasons, and removing this service could be much more expensive in other ways.

And finally, this brings us to the issue of socialism. A word that has been bandied around a lot. One reason that I hate these discussions is that the impact of government on the economy and society in the United States is so deep and widespread that it is is hard to say where it stops and starts. Is the Department of Transportation spending 3 million dollars a year so that the residents of Mason City, Iowa don't have to drive 90 minutes to Rochester to catch an airplane socialism? Does it represent an interference in the market economy? Does it prevent a more efficient usage of resources, for example, shuttle bus service? (And yes, although I won't dwell on it, many of the rural communities receiving these subsidies are politically conservative). And the answer is---it is complicated. One of the reasons why "socialism" is such a complicated thing to debate is that adding up all the different subsidies and expenses that the US government spends in different places is very difficult to do. And most people taking Essential Air Service are probably not aware that they are doing so. But in my mind, yes, subsidizing transportation services in communities where it would otherwise not be feasible is by definition a type of "socialism". And the argument could be made that it isn't done just to help the poor, or people who depend on the service for vital things like high-technology medical service. By subsidizing one airline, the airport has a steady source of income, can provide other services, and can be a stable center of jobs in the community. But of course, there is a term for the belief that government support of sectors of the economy helps a market economy become stronger, and that term is either "Keynesian Economics", or, as the current misnomer has it, "socialism".



Postscript: an obvious question about Essential Air Service is how it will change with the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused a contraction of both air travel and population in many smaller communities. While this is an important question, discussing it further is outside the scope of this basic review of Essential Air Service.




https://www.transportation.gov/policy/aviation-policy/small-community-rural-air-service/essential-air-service https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2021-10/Subsidized%20EAS%20report%20for%20communities%20in%2048%20states_HI_PR_Oct2021.pdf

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