Weak. That’s the best way to describe the Allegheny County Airport Authority’s latest defense of public subsidies for foreign flights out of Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT).
The issue resurfaced in a Thursday Post-Gazette story in which reporter Adam Babetski was detailing the findings of an Allegheny Institute study that concluded Greater Pittsburgh’s economic stagnation could be a damper on attracting new travelers to PIT.
The analysis, by Jake Haulk, the think tank’s president-emeritus, concluded that PIT is at a “serious disadvantage” attempting to increase passenger traffic compared to airports with “substantially faster population and employment gains.”
And that’s even with the Airport Authority doling out those generous public subsidies, especially, as of late, for all three of its current international flights, as the P-G duly notes — $3 million to British Airways over two years starting in 2019; $350,000 to Icelandair in 2024 and $5.25 million to Aer Lingus over two years for service to Dublin, which begins next month.
Which brings us to the crux of today’s At Large: Though claiming grand economic benefits for Greater Pittsburgh from those subsidized foreign flights, the Airport Authority steadfastly had not reported passenger counts.
Our position long has been that those numbers would have been trumpeted had they been good. And now we know why the trumpets never were blown.
Per the same P-G story:
“Last year’s travel numbers show that far more passengers are flying overseas from Pittsburgh than the other way around. In all, 234,178 travelers boarded international flights from Pittsburgh International last year, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) only processed about 95,000 international arrivals — including passengers and crew — through Pittsburgh, according to [CBP] spokesman Steve Sapp.”
Thus, Haulk, a Ph.D. economist, was spot on – those public subsidies to those foreign airlines have been exporting more economic benefits than they have been importing them.
Despite the clear evidence, an unnamed PIT “spokesperson” mounted a weak, canned defense in a written statement, as the P-G reported:
“[F]lights to locations like London and Dublin provide local businesses with ‘robust, nonstop access to world markets,’ and the incentives ‘absolutely’ benefit the local economy.” Added the spokesperson, “Our air service is on track to match the renaissance that is happening in Pittsburgh and is meeting the community needs.”
Clearly, the numbers suggest there is an overall demand for these departing foreign flights. So why do they require millions of dollars in public subsidies?
More importantly, why is the public subsidizing the foreign flight of U.S. dollars?
Just as clearly, the Customs and Border Protection numbers more than suggest the arriving foreign flights are not flooding Greater Pittsburgh with much in the way of foreign money, especially if it is assumed that a significant bolus of those arrivals are natives returning from their foreign journeys.
And to what “renaissance” is the PIT spokesperson referring? Stubbornly flat economic and population metrics here?
Once again, class: “The only way the subsidy makes sense is if large numbers of foreign visitors are on the return flights and are contributing to the local economy while in the region,” Haulk noted a year ago.
Obviously, they are not.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
