Judging by a recently published U.S. General Accounting Office study on the effectiveness of government support for small community air service, subsidy proponents face an uphill battle against the Bush Administration’s proposal to cut EAS funding from $113 million to $50 million and eliminate the Small Community Air Service Development pilot program for fiscal year 2004. Far from raising concerns about the proposed budget’s potential to remove small communities from the nation’s air-transport network, the 19-page study essentially questioned the return on the government’s investment, stressing the programs’ escalating costs and declining usage base.
According to the study, the number of passengers flying on routes supported by the EAS program continues to fall while program costs have tripled since FY1995. The average subsidy per community between 1995 and 2002 rose from $424,000 to $828,000 (2002 constant dollars), resulting in a per-passenger increase from $79 to $229. Meanwhile, less than 10 percent of a given community’s potential passengers typically use the subsidized service, it said, while the rest quite rationally choose to drive to a larger airport offering lower fares or more frequent service. In FY2000, the median number of passengers on each EAS flight fell to just three.
