Discussions between United Airlines officials and Yeager Airport's marketing staff could lead to new nonstop service between Charleston and Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey on the outskirts of New York City, airport spokesman Mike Plante said during a meeting of Yeager's governing board on Wednesday.
Plante said the airport's commercial aviation consultant, The Boyd Group, is preparing a market analysis of the possible new route to determine user demand, while National Travel is considering putting together flight and ground transportation packages to make the Newark route more attractive to Manhattan-bound passengers. According to the New Jersey airport's website, rail service accessible at several points within the airport makes it possible to reach Manhattan in about 30 minutes for a fee of $12.50.
While fast access to New York would be the main draw of the route, Newark Liberty International "has twice the flight connections that Dulles has, including international connections," Plante said.
American Airlines opted in June 2013 to drop nonstop service between Yeager and New York's LaGuardia International Airport while initiating new nonstop service to Dallas, which it considered a better hub for Charleston travelers.
In other developments at Wednesday's meeting, Yeager's executive director Terry Sayre said that work on the removal of debris from the March 2015 collapse of the Charleston Airport's safety overrun area should be complete in four or five weeks, now that 630 feet of the engineered fill structure that once supported it have been removed, leaving only about 30 feet of dirt and rocks still covering Keystone Drive - closed since the day of the slide. But before Keystone Drive can be reopened to traffic, a large Charleston sanitary sewer line still covered by slide debris must either be repaired or removed and replaced. A temporary system, involving a temporary sewer line and fuel-powered pumps, has been in use since shortly after the landslide.
Airport attorneys are trying to negotiate an agreement with Keystone Apostolic Church, which was destroyed in the slide, allowing earth-moving trucks to cross onto church property to reach a new disposal site on airport-owned land near the base of the slide, rather than continuing to haul it up lengthy haul road and through a series of switchback turns to continue using a disposal site on an airport slope facing the Elk River.
There was no discussion on Wednesday of studying the possibility of extending Yeager's main runway into neighboring Coonskin Park as a rebuild option. Earlier this week,Yeager's finance committee discussed the possibility of including that option in an updated master plan for the airport, which has yet to be let out to bid.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169 or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.