PROVINCETOWN — Out on Race Point Road at the windswept end of the Cape Cod National Seashore, the lights are still on at Provincetown’s airport. The building is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the bustle of arriving and departing passengers has subsided since Cape Air’s last flight of the year departed in early November.
Cape Air was founded on the Provincetown-to-Boston route, which it had flown year-round since 1989. For three decades, Cape Air provided the Outer Cape’s only scheduled air service, but on Aug. 30 the company sent a letter to Provincetown’s airport commission announcing that it would stop flying for more than six months this winter: from Nov. 4, 2024 to May 15, 2025.
The bad news came too late in the year for the town to recruit another airline to fly this winter, so the Transportation Security Administration’s screening devices are now covered in large blue tarps — only commercial passengers are screened, and now there are none.
Private planes are still flying in and out, Provincetown Airport Manager Billy Juraschek told the Independent on Dec. 16. “Sometimes there are three private planes in a day, sometimes five, sometimes none,” he said. “Last week we had really high winds and we didn’t see a plane for four days in a row.”
Flight schools in Chatham, Hyannis, and Plymouth have continued using Provincetown’s runway for takeoff and landing practice, Juraschek said. Cape Air pilots at the company’s base in Hyannis train on Provincetown’s runway as well.
“People sometimes come in to the airport and ask us why there’s no flights when they see planes coming and going,” Juraschek said. “The Cape Air pilots train in the same aircraft they use for passengers, so I can see why people would be confused.”
The Enterprise rental car outpost is quiet, but it is still operating, Juraschek said. The Enterprise desk is not staffed full-time — an employee typically arrives in the morning to drop off keys for cars that have been reserved.
According to a discussion at the airport commission on Dec. 10, Cape Air employees used to hold the rental car keys for people with reservations, regardless of whether they were arriving on Cape Air. Airport staff are holding the keys for Enterprise customers now, but airport commission chair Brian Orter said that he doesn’t want town employees to fill that role indefinitely.
“I don’t want the airport cleaning cars or giving out keys or anything like that — that’s not our job,” said Orter. Town counsel is reviewing language for new contracts with rental car companies now that Cape Air won’t have a full-time presence, Juraschek said.
The TSA agents who used to work here are mostly working shifts at other airports, Juraschek said, adding that “that’s what I understand from the management team — I didn’t get to talk to all the agents.”
The people that Cape Air had employed in Provincetown are mostly working at other airports as well, according to Juraschek. “I believe there’s one traveling back and forth to Boston for work,” he said.
Juraschek is confident that Cape Air will be back in May. “We will definitely see them — they’re still interested in flying out of here,” he said. “And they’re paying their monthly rent.”
Federal Funds for Small Towns
The town is now planning to pursue federal money through the Small Community Air Service Development Program to subsidize an airline to serve Provincetown year-round.
“Just yesterday and last week, I spoke with Fly the Whale, Tradewind, and Southern,” Orter told the airport commission on Dec. 10. “They’re all interested.” Fly the Whale, headquartered in East Haven, Conn., is most interested, he said, adding that “it does look like there’s a lot of chatter in the airline community as well.”
Fly the Whale has offered charter or “on demand” flights since it was founded in 2009, but in 2023 it began ticketed service in the U.S. Virgin Islands and this fall added a ticketed route between Block Island and Westerly, R.I.
“We can use the funds to subsidize an airline or offer them a minimum revenue guarantee,” Juraschek told the commission. “The funding is very competitive — there’s only $10 million available for the entire United States.”
In September 2023, Del Rio, Texas received a $1.2-million federal grant to “support new air service to the community, which lost all air service earlier this year.” Del Rio’s only commercial service had been to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and the town’s grant application “qualified for the air service restoration merit,” according to the Dept. of Transportation’s grant announcement.
Dubuque, Iowa received a $1.5-million grant that year because it had also lost its only daily air service and was seeking to restore it. All the other communities that received money were aiming to diversify their route networks to new cities rather than restore their primary air connections.
Provincetown plans to hire an air service consultant to help prepare its grant application, Town Manager Alex Morse wrote in a Dec. 4 memo to the select board.
“The funds can be used over a four-year period” to help a new airline get established, Juraschek told the commission.
To Logan by Land
In the meantime, Outer Cape residents who need to fly have limited options for reaching a major airport.
The Peter Pan bus departs Provincetown twice a day for the Hyannis Transportation Center, which is less than a mile from Cape Cod Gateway Airport in Hyannis. The one-hour-and-20-minute bus ride costs $7. A second Peter Pan bus runs from Hyannis to Boston’s Logan Airport. According to the company’s website, riding both the Provincetown-to-Hyannis bus and the Hyannis-to-Logan bus, with a 25-minute layover in-between, takes just over 3.5 hours and costs $32.
Hiring a taxi costs a lot more — about $200 to Hyannis and about $400 to Logan, according to Raphael Richter, who owns Cape Cab and Mercedes Cab. The pricing varies in the same way it does on rideshare services, he said, depending on how many drivers he has available versus demand for any given trip. Private drivers charge between $250 and $450 for Provincetown-to-Logan trips, he estimated.
Developing new ground links to the Hyannis airport isn’t a focus for his company, Richter said. Nor is it a priority for the town right now, said Juraschek. Instead, the town is aiming to get airplanes back in the sky year-round.
