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United Airlines flew from Newark Liberty International to Columbia Metropolitan Airport, near the home of then-Port Authority Chairman David Samson for 19 months, despite lackluster demand for the route, while the agency weighed a $1.5 billion extension of PATH service to Newark airport. (Star-Ledger file photo)

NEWARK -- Were the friendly skies of United a little too friendly to former Port Authority Chairman David Samson?

Elected officials, airline watchdogs and even Samson's successor say they are concerned by reports that United Airlines and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have been subpoenaed for records involving Samson's travel from Newark to an airport near his home in South Carolina.

United launched the service in September 2012, after Samson became chairman in early 2011. It then dropped the three weekly flights by its ExpressJet regional subsidiary three days after Samson resigned last March amid an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark prompted by the September 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures.



Of particular concern to some is that during the 19 months of non-stop flights between Newark Liberty International and Columbia Metropolitan airports using 50-seat Embraer jets, the Port Authority was weighing whether to extend PATH service from Newark Penn Station to the airport, at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. United accounts for 70 percent of all flights at Newark Liberty, and the PATH extension, now included in the agency's 10-year, $27.6 billion capital plan adopted under Samson last February, would be a substantial benefit to the airline, its employees and air travelers desiring a single-seat mass-transit link from Manhattan to the airport.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), the Assembly's transportation committee chairman and co-chair of a special legislative panel looking into the lane closures, said this latest episode, first reported in The Record, bore the early warning signs of yet another potential conflict for Samson.



"There's certainly the appearance," said Wisniewski, who said time and further investigation would tell what, if anything, the flights were linked to. "It could be PATH. It could be how much they pay for landing planes. It could be for how flights are dispatched at the airport. It could be a multitude of things. And it could be none of them."

The Record cited unnamed sources as saying federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records from the Port Authority in January regarding Samson's use of the flights and his dealings with United, and quoted one source saying Samson himself used the term, "the chairman's flight. The Record also reported that prosecutors were seeking records involving State Transportation Commissioner Jaimie Fox, whose lobbying firm represented United. Fox did not return calls for comment.

If United launched the service to impress the head of a powerful public agency with the power to affect the carrier's bottom line, the route itself was unimpressive, at least in terms of its lackluster ticket sales indicating relatively slack demand.

Clearly, the route was not popular by industry standards. An analysis of data from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics found there were a total of 286 non-stop flights between Newark Liberty and Columbia by ExpressJet, carrying a total of 7,149 passengers. That means each flight averaged just under 25 passengers, or a 50 percent booking rate, well below the rate of 85 percent or higher common among carriers.

Flying that kind of route for 19 months just doesn't make sense, unless short-term ticket sales are not what you're after, said Kate Hanni, founder of California-based fliersrights.org.

"No airline would continue a flight that was regularly half full, unless it was receiving government subsidies," Hanni said. "If not subsidized, then United was operating a flight that was losing money, again airlines don't continue flights that are burning a hole in their pocket unless they have someone important of great influence on board."

Under its Essential Air Service program, the Federal Department of Transportation does subsidize flights at small-market airports that otherwise might not attract carriers. But Columbia is not among the program's eligible cities.

If United was eager to please the Port Authority chairman, it didn't demonstrate it through on-time performance. Data from the transportation statistics bureau for 2013 indicate the Thursday night flight from Newark to Columbia Metropolitan, United 4410, had a dismal 26 percent on-time record, and was only 40 percent on-time record on the return trip to Newark, compared to a 72.8 percent on-time performance record for the airline overall that year.

The longtime president of Newark Air Traffic Controllers Association union at Newark Liberty, Ray Adams, said he could not recall United ever requesting that one of its Columbia Metropolitan flights be given a priority, a request airlines sometimes make, for example, for lucrative flights on big jets headed overseas.

"I don't' have any direct information to say that aircraft was pushed ahead of other aircraft," Adams said. "I don't' specifically remember anybody saying to me, hey pushing that aircraft up to the front."

Columbia Metropolitan Airport is about 50 northeast of Aiken, S.C., a picturesque town of red clay lanes and retirees, where Samson, 75, and his wife, Joanna, bought a "2,500-square-foot 1887 cottage" for $380,000 in 2002, according to a 2008 profile of the place in The New York Times, headlined, "Where Horses and Their Riders Winter."

"I went down and fell in love," the chairman's wife, a fox hunting enthusiast, was quoted in the story as saying. "The red-clay dirt roads. The crosswalks that have two push buttons: one for pedestrians, one higher up for horseback riders."

A spokeswoman for Samson, Karen Kessler, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, who is leading the wide-ranging investigation prompted by the lane closures.

United issued a statement saying it "has received subpoenas for information and is cooperating."

But United declined to say why it launched the service, or why it cancelled it. United did not issue press releases announcing the Columbia-Newark service, which is common for new routes, or its cancellation.

United's service between Newark and Columbia was not unprecedented. Continental Airlines, which merged with United in 2011, offered similar flights, but ended them in June 2009, according to a grant application by the airport to the federal DOT, which did not say why. Columbia Metropolitan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Port Authority's current chairman, John Degnan, who like Samson is a former state attorney general named to the agency by Gov. Chris Christie, would not elaborate on or even confirm that agency records involving Samson and the flights had been subpoenaed.

But Degnan said he was "concerned," just as he would be "any time there's an investigation."

In December, under Degnan, the Port Authority advanced the PATH extension by awarding a $6 million contract to HNTB to study compliance and other issues and develop a more precise project cost estimate.

"The project will move forward on its own, based on its merits," Degnan said.

NJ Advance Media staff writers Craig McCarthy and Seth Augenstein contributed to this report.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow hin on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.