Airport is a ‘wonderful’ local asset
IMPERIAL — Mokulele Airlines flies four daily commercial flights from Imperial County Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. Those flight, typically, are only half full, but the service and the carrier are both valuable to the community, county Board Chairman Ryan Kelley said last week.
Kelley said the airport and airline are extremely important because if the airline left the county and its airport, the county would have a difficult time finding another commercial airline to replace it.
Mokulele Airlines started offering commercial service out of the airport in May 2017, after SeaPort Airlines pulled out.
The airport has two asphalt paved runways. The larger one is 5,308 by 100 feet. The smaller one is 4,501 by 75 feet.
Imperial County Airport Manager Sandra Gutierrez-Carver said last year 6,500 people departed from the airport, and another 6.400 arrived from LAX.
The planes can carry nine passengers or 36 combined on the four daily flights, though less than 18 of the seats on average are filled.
Gutierrez-Carver and Public Information Officer Linsey Dale said the county and supervisors encourages its employees who need to fly for work to use the airport and then find a connecting flight from Los Angeles to the final destination.
If the flight is short, like Sacramento, Dale said it makes more sense to fly out of San Diego than using the Imperial County Airport.
There are four arrivals and departures a day with two in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.
“(Mokulele) is a commuter airline to connect rural areas to larger destinations,” Gutierrez-Carver said. “It’s for these small communities.”
To fly to Los Angeles and back with advanced notice is $57 each way, and the flights are subsidized through Essential Air Service. Flying without advanced notice is slightly more than $70 each way.
Gutierrez-Carver said the airport is operating in the black, and she added the Federal Aviation Administration requires airports to be as financially solvent as possible.
She said the small airport is just like any other airport with guidelines that need to be followed.
“It is just so streamlined. I think they have wonderful pricing, but it needs to be in advance,” Gutierrez-Carver said. It’s a full airport out here. “It’s tiny, but it’s a full airport.”
She said the airport has four gates and the Imperial County Fire Department Station No. 1 is located at the airport.
She said the benefits of using the county airport include the convenience, free parking and the time a passenger will save, adding it takes the frustration out of flying.
She said the supervisors in the past have discussed charging for parking at the airport, but it never materialized.
For passengers who want to stay with the same carrier on the second leg of their flight, Mokulele has entered into an agreement with Alaska Airlines. Besides the commercial flights with Mokulele Airlines, the airport offers regional air ambulance service, agriculture services for farmers to spray crops, Hertz and Avis car rentals and numerous freight company carriers, like UPS and DHL.
For general aviation, there are 40 hangars at the airport, with two executive ones, and the fixed-based operator, which sells fuel, is Imperial Flying Service.
“The county has a wonderful asset,” Gutierrez-Carver said. “We may be small, but from the inside we are just as big as the other guys.”