“Arnold Palmer Regional Airport targets federal grant program to replace Spirit Airlines,” reads the Tribune-Review headline.
“Westmoreland County officials look to a revenue-guarantee fund to lure a new low-cost carrier,” goes the sub-head.
“The effort to attract a new commercial airline to … Palmer … could rely on federal funding,” the lede of the story says.
“This is basically our best shot,” Moe Haas, Westmoreland County Airport Authority’s executive director, told the Trib, referring to the authority’s application for funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Small Community Air Service Development Program.
Allow us to translate: The only way Palmer believes it can replace Spirit, its only commercial carrier until Spirit went belly up in April, is to secure taxpayer dollars to bribe a new carrier to set up shop at the Unity Township airfield.
As the Trib explains it:
“The money is used to guarantee revenue for airlines that agree to launch commercial service at small airports that recently lost it. The funding ensures airlines meet passenger thresholds that could enable them to break even for up to three years of service at a new airport.”
Submitted with the application for this bolus of corporate wealthfare is a letter of interest from an airline that Haas declined to name.
The tacit implication is that this mystery airline won’t serve Palmer unless taxpayers are forced to make it whole there.
The feds have made $12 million in funding available to local airports as part of the small airport bailout program. Grants range from $20,000 to $1.6 million. “The last funding round in October 2024 saw grants awarded to 14 airports throughout the United States, with most of those awards totaling $1 million,” the Trib says.
We don’t mean to beat a dead horse here. But Palmer Regional has become something akin to a ward of the government and the taxpayers who are repeatedly mugged to prop it up.
The nearly complete $22 million airport expansion project, designed to promote choice with a second carrier and originally set to be dedicated this month, was funded with a state grant.
Westmoreland County has been spending $2.6 million annually to staff airline flight operations.
Now there’s talk of $1 million (and perhaps more) in federal money to “lure” (a bribe by any other name) a Spirit replacement to serve Palmer.
And, as we’ve noted before, it all comes in a climate of steady, serious and years’-long passenger declines at Palmer. With, we again remind, Pittsburgh International Airport less than 90 minutes (by road) away.
If the market demand isn’t there, it isn’t there. And shoveling more and more taxpayer dollars Palmer’s way won’t change that fact.
As Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, pointedly asked in a 2018 white paper on airlines subsidies in general (Policy Brief Vol. 18, No. 32):
“Why should local or state [or federal] taxpayers underwrite the flights of people so they can avoid using existing options? …
“Money spent on ill-advised subsidies is money that could be used for other justifiable purposes on behalf of taxpayers.
“Or the tax dollars could have been left in taxpayer pockets in the first place in the form of lower tax rates,” the Ph.D. economist reminded.
Fast-forward to today and Palmer’s problem, Haulk asks why do Westmoreland politicians insist on focusing on air service as population dwindles?
“The county’s population has fallen from nearly 370,000 in 2000 to under 350,000 in 2025 and shows no signs of stopping,” he notes.
“Instead, the pols search for money to heavily subsidize limited air service for a very limited passenger base. Talk about wasted resources.
“They would be better served by offering residents low-cost transportation to PIT,” he adds. “They built a white elephant airport and are trying to justify wasting $20 million-plus.”
These are the facts on the ground for what has rapidly become a giant air ball.
We certainly don’t wish ill upon Arnold Palmer Regional Airport; it’s sick enough already.
But neither can we abide the poor public policy of pouring good public dollars after bad and insisting it’s an “investment” when the endeavor clearly is not sustainable without public crutches.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
