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Dave Morgan feels betrayed by the entrepreneurial spirit western Cape Breton claims to embrace.

“I got a call from a journalist late in the evening and he told me the government was going to build a new airport in Inverness and I obviously wasn’t a part of it and that I might as well pack up and head back out west,” said Morgan, 37, who has operated the Allan J. MacEachen Airport in Port Hastings for two years.

“It’s definitely betrayal. The entire success of the area depends on everybody learning to work together and not creating barriers and not having government being able to pick winners and losers. We were shocked to hear that the government would be getting into the airport game ... The federal government hasn’t been involved in the airport business for a long, long time.”

Still, the scuttlebutt around Inverness County and beyond is that the federal government, through the Rural Infrastructure Fund, and the province are considering investing $18 million into building a new airport near the village of Inverness and its two very successful privately owned Cabot Links golf courses.

The proponents of the proposed Cape Breton Island Airport, including Cabot, released a business plan last week that projected in its first five years, the airport would generate more than 600 direct and indirect full-time jobs, $42.7 million in direct and spinoff gross domestic product, $26.7 million in direct and spinoff household income and $6.4 million in government tax revenue.

Eighty-five kilometres south of Inverness, about an hour’s drive along coastal Highway 19, Morgan has poured his heart, soul and finances into the Allan J. MacEachen aerodrome. Convincing his Ottawa-born wife Elizabeth to move their family, including two daughters now aged seven and eight, back to Nova Scotia, Morgan founded Celtic Air Services, a full-service operator for the airport.

Morgan said his team receives all incoming flights, booking passenger accommodations and transportation and providing catering, fuelling and cleaning services. “Everything you need for an aircraft,” he said.

He estimates that being everything to aircraft landing and taking off in Port Hastings has cost him in the range of $2.5 million, “and the bank has put up the rest.” Morgan has built a new airport terminal, what he calls an executive lounge where people can kick back and relax before or after a flight.

“People talk about entrepreneurship and investing in Cape Breton,” said Morgan, who grew up in Margaree Forks, about 25 kilometres northeast of Inverness. “This (Inverness airport) website is called Build Cape Breton. I think there are a whole lot more people trying to build Cape Breton other than the folks at Cabot. They’ve done an incredible job of building a golf resort. But we often talk to folks at tourism conferences across North America, and they are excited about more than just golf.”

Morgan said Tourism Nova Scotia numbers show golfers make up only five per cent of tourists coming to the province.

“There are so many opportunities and for these folk to be claiming this is the one that will build cape Breton is rather insulting to everyone else who has building it all along, especially without federal money.”

Morgan said the number of flights into and out of the Port Hastings airport varies by day, anywhere from one to 20. He said the airport accommodates 1,000 jet flights in a year, with the summer months making up 90 per cent or more of the annual traffic.

Morgan said chartered planes landing at the airport can seat four to 30 passengers.

“The average aircraft coming in probably has between four and eight passengers on board plus the crew.”

Brenda Chisholm Beaton is the mayor of Port Hawkesbury, one of three municipalities, along with Inverness and Richmond counties, that are governing and financial partners in the Allan J. MacEachen facility. She said the airport, which employs up to nine people, serves the existing businesses and industry in the Strait region, including Nova Scotia Power and Port Hawkesbury Paper, private and public-sector flights and local pilots.

On the campaign trail, Chisholm-Beaton said she was continually asked about initiatives to bring displaced Cape Bretoners back home.

“Dave Morgan is a wonderful example,” she said. “He’s a pilot from Margaree. He spent a significant amount of time cultivating his career in northern Canada. ... That led him to start conversations about being a service provider here.”

Morgan said eight or nine of every 10 jets that land in Port Hastings are bringing golfers in to play the Inverness courses.

“Some of them are coming in and they are being picked up by Cabot Mercedes vans, others are coming in and renting cars and heading in different directions,” he said “Cabot has been a huge drive in getting people to come to western Cape Breton..”

Through the tri-municipal committee that governs the Allan J. MacEachen airport, Morgan has applied several times to the federal government’s Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency for funding to improve airport infrastructure.

“Those have been turned down,” he said. “The $18 million, that would be equivalent of winning the lottery in the airport game.”

Morgan said the Inverness business plan is short on detail and the calculations are extremely optimistic.

“Anybody can put together a set of numbers if you don’t have to tell people where they come from,” he said. “I think that (CEO Mike) MacKinnon at the McCurdy airport in Sydney could refute the employment numbers. He has these scheduled services that these people are talking about coming in every day and he has the rental car businesses and he has the local impact, and I don’t think that the Sydney airport folks could count up 600 jobs if you counted everybody twice. It’s quite a stretch.”

Morgan, who still works for a regional airline, would like to attract commercial flights to Port Hastings but said the airport would require upgrades to the terminal building, runway lighting and security fencing.

“It’s tough to put an exact number on it (upgrades) but I can tell you it’s a fraction of $18 million,” Morgan said.

“What we already have works and could be expanded upon to bring in seasonal scheduled service or to bring in special charters. We have the foundation of a great little airport in Port Hastings already. It’s tough to think that somebody wants to clearcut forests and start fresh 50 miles away.”

Morgan said the western side of the island cannot prop up two airports.

“The reality is that if the private jet traffic moves from Allan J. to another airport, any other airport, we simply don’t have a business case. We cannot sustain staffing costs , insurance costs and infrastructure costs.

“We’re all done.”