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BRUCE EVANS

There has been a lot of buzz lately about getting the federal and Nova Scotia governments to invest $18 million in an airport for Inverness.

The Port Hawkesbury airport is against it for obvious reasons. Other factions, the owners of the Cabot golf courses and tourism promoters, have largely come out in favour of the proposal. The supporters generally cite vast, but numerically unsustantiated, tourism potential with a new airport. The Cabot owners have released a five-page “business case” that is almost bereft of numbers and without factual support for the few stats presented.

So, let’s do just a shallow dive into the practical considerations for even considering the airport proposal. First, a quick note as to my own credentials in this area. I spent a 35-year-plus career evaluating and financing large commercial projects. I am a private pilot who has served in organizations concerning themselves with airport viability and operation.

So far, the proposed Inverness airport doesn’t pass even a cursory smell test. It is revealing that the “business case” relies more upon PR folks than upon business analysts.

How many private jets, whose principal mission was transporting golfers to the Cabot courses, have landed in Port Hawkesbury each year since the courses opened? That info would provide a reasonable baseline for evaluating a proper airport business case. How many private jet flights do the promoters expect each summer? How much Jet-A fuel do they expect to sell? How much catering revenue? What are the projected landing and ramp fees? That about exhausts the direct revenue possibilities.

What are the likely fixed and variable costs of the operation? Is that projected profitability — or otherwise — sufficient to justify a private, for-profit FBO (fixed-base operator) or will that function need to be subsidized? By how much?

Six hundred jobs? Doing what? Seasonal or permanent? Pay rates? I have seen too many of these “direct and indirect” estimates, pretty much provided on a made-as-instructed basis, to believe them for even a second.

Everyone wants sustainable new employment in Cape Breton. But we also have long and painful memories of ill-considered government investments in projects of suspect viability, large and small.

And where is the capital cost analysis to support the $18-million cost estimate? Large, private jets (eg. G-550) weigh 75,000 pounds upon landing and touch down somewhere either side of 130 knots of airspeed. That sort of impact, repeated many times over years, requires more than a foot of gravel and two layers of asphalt to support it. A proper runway for corporate jets will need to be at least a mile long. Add in costs for lighting, navigation aids, hangars, taxiways, groundside infrastructure, etc. Someone with technical expertise needs to do the capital cost math, not simply have a PR person pluck a number out of thin air.

Commercial airline attraction justification? I don’t think so. Sydney’s McCurdy airport struggles to keep its peak season total of 14 daily flights and eight or 10 in the winter. I doubt that McCurdy can profitably operate on those volumes, so it’s unlikely to be a big enough pie to share. Port Hawkesbury, with its larger population base than Inverness and environs and its commercial as well as tourism draws, hasn’t been able to attract airline traffic. And, without airline attraction, the case for increased tourism because of the airport flies off into the sunset.

If anyone wants to study a comparable commercial aviation attraction case, look up Mammoth Mountain in California. Mammoth is a world-class ski resort and a popular summer destination for outdoors lovers — featuring rock-climbing, hiking, golf, soaring, etc. After many years of airline attraction failure, Mammoth now has all of four regional airline flights per day, and those are having a tough time justifying their existence. And Mammoth has much higher tourism attraction demographics and numbers than western Cape Breton. So, please beware the commercial aviation dreams.

Finally, we come to the acid test feasibility question. If this airport is such a great economic opportunity, benefiting the golf courses as well as the surrounding region generally, why aren’t the Cabot owners offering to pick up even a nickel of the cost? The question answers itself.

Bruce F. Evans, Prescott Valley, AZ (formerly from Nova Scotia)