An Independent-minded calendar of arts and events for Outer Cape Cod

Advertise in the Indie.

Reach more readers from Eastham to Provincetown.

Unchained news for Outer Cape Cod

The Provincetown Independent

Let us bring you the paper.

Your subscription supports real community journalism.

Cape Air

    TRANSPORTATION

    Cape Air Resumes, But Provincetown Still Seeks Year-Round Carrier

    Loss of passengers will eventually mean loss of FAA funds

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — In three weeks, commercial flights between Provincetown and Boston will resume after a six-month hiatus.

    The landing fee for Cape Air’s Tecnam P2012 Traveller will be $75 next year — less than the $150 that similar-size charter planes will pay but an increase from the free landing privileges that the company enjoyed when it was the town’s “signatory” year-round airline. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    Cape Air — the only carrier to offer scheduled flights to Provincetown since the company was founded in 1989 — announced just before Labor Day last year that it would operate here only seasonally. The last Cape Air flight left on Nov. 4; service will resume on May 16.

    The company announced last week that in addition to offering up to 11 flights a day this summer, it will also resume flights from Provincetown to the Westchester County airport near White Plains, N.Y. beginning June 13.

    “We’ll start out with two flights per day from Thursday through Monday” on the White Plains route, said Cape Air’s Aaron Blinka, “though if demand warrants, we may increase the frequency.”

    In 2016, only 206 people flew from Provincetown to White Plains on Cape Air from June to September, according to Provincetown Tourism Dept. reports. In 2017 only 87 passengers made the trip. In 2018, the route was canceled entirely because of a shortage of pilots, Provincetown Tourism Director Tony Fuccillo reported; 344 passengers flew to White Plains between June and September 2019.

    The passenger counts for the White Plains route are low, especially compared to the months in which Cape Air says it is not profitable to fly the Provincetown-Boston route.

    According to airport commission data, in 2016, 2017, and 2019 more people flew from Provincetown to Boston in November alone than in four months of summer service from Provincetown to White Plains.

    Between Nov. 1, 2016 and April 30, 2017, a total of 2,075 passengers flew from Provincetown to Boston — more than 10 times the number that flew to White Plains the summer before.

    Blinka said that passenger volume isn’t the key to profitability.

    “The rule of thumb is that more passengers and full flights do not necessarily equate to profitability,” he said. The White Plains route “can support economically sustainable fares during the summer season,” while during winter in Provincetown, “the fares that the market can support to attract the passenger volume that we carried are simply not commensurate with our costs.”

     

    A Challenge in Boston

    Provincetown’s leaders are still focused on securing a year-round carrier who will provide service to Boston in the winter, Airport Manager Billy Juraschek said. The town is preparing to apply for a federal grant through the FAA’s Small Community Air Service Development Program. The application is due this summer, and grants were announced in October last year, said Juraschek.

    “They gave out $12 million, but it’s a very competitive program,” he said. Toledo, Ohio won a $1 million grant last October to restore commercial air service after American Airlines cut its last routes there in 2022. Missoula, Mont. was granted $875,000 to pay for a “revenue guarantee” to support year-round service to Chicago.

    Provincetown is unlikely to get year-round service back without a similar amount of federal money, Juraschek said; the town isn’t taking steps toward implementing a subsidy of its own. A single grant award can be spent over four years, but the town will likely not know if it’s been selected until very close to the end of Cape Air’s seasonal service in November.

    “Fly the Whale is still interested in becoming a year-round carrier here,” Juraschek said. But “the main challenge they have is at the Boston end.”

    Although Fly the Whale is primarily a charter company, it offers scheduled service between St. Croix and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and between Block Island and Westerly, R.I. At Logan Airport, however, it would need to land its planes at a charter and private aircraft terminal owned by a company called Signature Aviation, Juraschek said, rather than at Terminal C, where Cape Air lands.

    Signature charges about $700 per incoming plane, Juraschek said, and Fly the Whale would need to secure a steep discount if it hoped to land there several times a day all year long.

    Town officials and state Sen. Julian Cyr held a meeting recently with officials from Massport, the state agency that owns Logan Airport, to highlight issues facing a new carrier, according to both Juraschek and Cyr.

    “Outer Cape residents deserve reliable service year-round, not just during the busiest summer weeks,” said Cyr.

     

    Less Maintenance Money

    There are long-term maintenance needs at the airport that also depend indirectly on year-round service, Juraschek said. The FAA allocates $1 million per year in so-called entitlement funds for airports that embark at least 10,000 passengers per year, and that money can be spent on a range of projects to keep airports up to date, including runway work, lighting, and safety improvements.

    That entitlement funding falls to $150,000 per year for airports that have fewer than 10,000 departing passengers per year, Juraschek said.

    Provincetown had between 10,000 and 12,000 departing passengers per year almost every year from 2010 to 2019, according to airport commission data — but that number fell to only 4,198 departures during the pandemic year of 2020 and only partly recovered to 7,224 in 2022 and 7,521 in 2023.

    With Cape Air having ended year-round service, there were only 6,902 departing passengers in 2024, Juraschek said.

    “The FAA gave some grace years to airports after the pandemic,” he said, so the town still got the larger funding amount in 2022 and 2023.

    That money is set aside at the FAA for future projects, Juraschek said — but over time, local taxpayers could bear a larger share of airport maintenance costs if the town can’t restore winter service and get total passenger numbers back over 10,000.

    AVIATION

    Provincetown Penalizes Cape Air for Breaking Its Lease

    Officials say they’ll negotiate but search for alternative year-round air service

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Air’s decision to cancel all flights between Provincetown and Boston from Nov. 5 to May 15, announced in an Aug. 30 letter from CEO Linda Markham to Provincetown Airport Commission chair Brian Orter, has officials calculating what the company owes the town — and hoping for a renegotiation of terms.

    This Italian-made Tecnam P2012 Traveller is one of 30 in Cape Air’s fleet. The landing fee for a plane of this weight is $150 per arrival. The Cessna 402 in the background would pay $100 based on its weight. Since Cape Air no longer offers year-round service to Provincetown, it is no longer exempt from those fees. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    In a letter sent to Markham on Sept. 27, Orter and Town Manager Alex Morse wrote that Cape Air’s “reduction in service will constitute a breach of its lease with the Town.”

    The existing lease, signed in 1997 and extended several times since then, “fundamentally requires” that Cape Air provide year-round service, wrote Morse and Orter.

    Because the company will no longer do so, it owes the town landing fees of $100 for each Cessna flight and $150 for each Tecnam P2012 flight that arrived at Provincetown Airport starting Aug. 31, the letter says.

    There were 329 such flights between Aug. 31 and Sept. 27, amounting to $34,750 in landing fees for just those four weeks, Morse and Orter’s letter says.

    The town is also seeking $117,126 in back rent from Cape Air because the lease says the company’s rent was supposed to increase every year by the amount of the annual Consumer Price Index or 3 percent, whichever is lower.

    The company has been paying the same rent for its use of Provincetown Airport, $3,555 per month, since “at least 2011,” Orter and Morse wrote. The company’s current rent should actually be $4,915 with those annual adjustments, they wrote, and the town is now seeking to recoup 13 years of underpayments.

    The town’s letter also says that Cape Air will still have to pay rent for several months of this coming winter, because it’s obligated to pay for six months after breaching its lease.

    In all, the town is seeking at least $170,000 from the company — although the letter concludes by saying the town is “willing to negotiate in good faith the terms of continued Cape Air service without interruption, including at least one round-trip flight per day” at Provincetown Airport.

    On Oct. 8, Morse told a meeting of the airport commission that the town hoped to get Cape Air “back to the table to have a conversation about this winter.”

    The town could try to negotiate Cape Air’s six-month cancellation down to just three months, Morse said.

    “At the end of the day, it’s very possible we don’t have service this winter,” Morse told the commission. “But rest assured, we are going to do everything we can to make sure this is the last winter that we don’t have service.”

    Cape Air CEO Linda Markham declined a request for comment from the Independent, stating through a spokesperson that “since we are engaged in ongoing discussions with the Town, it would be premature and inappropriate for us to comment at this time.”

    Lots of Concessions

    For the entire 35-year period that Cape Air flew the Provincetown-to-Boston route, the town’s “minimum standards for operation” at Provincetown Airport have been written so that an air carrier that flies here in summer would also have to fly every day in winter, airport manager Billy Juraschek told the Independent last month.

    The idea was that the profitable summer months would underwrite winter losses — and a competing carrier would not be allowed to poach lucrative summer traffic while avoiding the town in winter.

    Last year, however, in response to concerns raised by Cape Air about the unprofitability of winter service, the airport commission told the company it could fly as few as one roundtrip flight per day only three days per week — less than half the official requirement of two roundtrip flights every day in winter, Orter and Morse said at the Oct. 8 meeting.

    That change was offered as a kind of trial run and wasn’t formally voted into the town’s “minimum standards” document, Juraschek said — but the airport commission believed it had helped the company.

    “We gave them a lot of concessions” in late 2023, Orter said at the meeting. After not hearing any complaints from the company this year, “We did not think they would end that agreement abruptly.”

    The select board is now discussing the idea of an operating subsidy, Morse told the commission, but Cape Air has described it as something that would be needed every winter, he said.

    The town is not sufficiently remote to qualify for the federal Essential Air Service program that typically provides those subsidies, Morse said. There is an alternative called Small Communities Air Service Development grants that could provide such a subsidy, Morse said, but the town can’t apply to that program until next July.

    Seeking Year-Round Service

    The town is also looking for alternative carriers that could step in where Cape Air has left off, Orter and Morse told the commission on Oct. 8.

    Orter named Boutique Air, Southern Airways, and Tradewind Aviation as carriers that might consider the Provincetown-to-Boston route.

    If the goal is to secure year-round service, though, then the summer would need to be lucrative enough to support winter losses, or a subsidy would have to fill the gap.

    A review of airport commission data shows that Cape Air’s passenger count at Provincetown airport, excluding the 24 months following the Covid shutdowns of 2020, has been remarkably steady in the winter months ever since 2010.

    Instead, it is summer traffic that has dramatically declined: from an average of 2,390 passengers per month each July and August in the 10 years before the pandemic to an average of 1,300 per month each July and August in the last two years.

    Passenger counts in June and September have similarly declined since the pandemic. The off-season — although not profitable, according to Cape Air — is the most stable part of the business in terms of passenger counts.

    Summer sales are important not just because of their volume, Juraschek said — summer is also the time when Cape Air charges the most for tickets. The number of passengers per month, the number of passengers per plane, and the price of each ticket are all highest in July and August, and each of those factors contributes to summer profitability.

    Juraschek said he didn’t think that competition from charter companies was responsible for the decline in Cape Air’s summer sales — “the fast ferry is where the competition is,” he said.

     

    NEXT RESORT

    Cape Air Cancels 6 Months of Provincetown Flights

    This winter, the airport will likely serve only private planes

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Air CEO Linda Markham announced in an Aug. 30 letter to Provincetown Airport Commission chair Brian Orter that the company was canceling all flights between Provincetown and Boston for more than six months beginning in early November.

    Most flights between Provincetown and Boston are on Cape Air’s Cessna 402s. They land at Terminal C in Logan Airport, allowing passengers to catch connecting flights all over the world. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    “Starting this year, BOS – PVC’s last date of operation will be Monday, Nov. 4, with a resumption on Friday, May 16, 2025,” Markham wrote.

    “We realize this marks a change to long-standing air service patterns at PVC,” Markham wrote, adding that “the stark reality is that the negative revenue environment during the winter is not sustainable.”

    The company was founded in 1989 on the Boston to Provincetown route, according to Cape Air’s website. It has offered year-round service to Logan Airport for 35 years, which has been especially important to people with frequent medical appointments there or who have to attend work meetings in other cities.

    The decision contravenes the company’s longstanding lease with the town.

    Cape Air signed a 20-year lease with Provincetown in 1997 that has been repeatedly extended since July 2017. Town Manager Alex Morse confirmed that the lease “is still in effect without a specific end date” and “is still the one we are operating on.”

    That lease specifies that the company’s “rights to operate at Provincetown Municipal Airport” are “defined and regulated by the Provincetown Airport Minimum Standards of Operation, as adopted May 1989.”

    Those minimum standards require the airline to offer at least two roundtrip flights — that is, two arrivals and two departures — every day for 365 days per year and four roundtrip flights between April 15 and Oct. 15.

    The airport commission has repeatedly discussed revising the minimum standards for off-season flights, according to both Orter and airport manager William Juraschek, but they have never been formally changed. As a result, Cape Air’s announcement means it will not be complying with the terms of its lease.

    Company founder and director Dan Wolf of Harwich, who stepped down as CEO in December 2021, told the Independent on Tuesday that there was nothing he could say on the record for this article.

    Subsidies for Service

    Markham’s letter says that Cape Air originally notified Provincetown’s airport commission in June 2023 that it did not want to operate the BOS – PVC route in the winter and that last year the company “agreed to postpone this decision to allow the airport commission and town leadership more time to prepare for this change.”

    Orter said that the airport commission has been discussing changes that would allow two options for scheduled air carriers in town: either being a “signatory carrier” that would commit to flying here year-round and would receive discounted fuel rates and free “landing fees,” or a “nonsignatory carrier” that would be allowed to fly here only in summer but receive no such perks.

    The town’s minimum standards had long been predicated on the notion that a summer-only carrier, if allowed to establish itself, would scoop up sales during profitable months and leave a year-round carrier in the red, Juraschek said.

    Cape Air, however, is alleging that even without competition in the summer the route has been running at a loss for years.

    “The losses are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the off-season,” wrote Cape Air’s marketing director Rebecca Chase in response to questions from the Independent.

    According to the minutes of a July 2023 meeting between Cape Air vice president Chuck Ferrara and the airport commission, Ferrara said that the Boston to Provincetown route “has been unprofitable for at least the past decade to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars a year.”

    Ferrara told the commission that “the route breaks even around May; is marginally profitable in June; July and August are good, profitable months; and then the carrier breaks even around mid-October and operates in the red for the rest of the off-season months.”

    That income pattern is hardly unusual for businesses on Cape Cod. Mandating that airlines offer flights both in the profitable summer months and the unprofitable winter months was for years the town’s approach to ensuring it had air service year-round.

    In its Aug. 30 letter, Cape Air essentially announced that it could no longer accept those terms.

    The company has been seeking a new lease since at least 2017, Chase told the Independent, and submitted its proposed revisions to the town’s draft of a new lease in December 2023.

    “We continue to await responses to those comments,” Chase said.

    At their meeting on Sept. 9, select board members were not pleased with the company’s announcement.

    “A lot of people are worried, and rightly so,” said board member Leslie Sandberg. “Cape Air has proved they’re not loyal to us. If this is an attempt to get us to do a subsidy for them, let’s open it up to everybody,” including other air carriers, Sandberg added, “because I think they’re showing incredibly bad faith.”

    Cape Air’s “winter losses have been offset by a very profitable summer service,” said board member Austin Miller. “I do not support ongoing subsidies for carriers that do not meet the needs of our year-round community.”

    Morse said that, as a seasonal carrier, Cape Air will now be “expected to pay a significant amount of money in landing fees.”

    The town’s landing fee program had been created only last year, partly to raise fees on charter companies that do not offer year-round service, according to the minutes of airport commission meetings. Based on the number of flights it ran last summer, Cape Air could conceivably have to pay more than $100,000 per year in landing fees.

    Juraschek said there are various inducements the town could conceivably offer to Cape Air in a new lease, including discounted rent for its counter space in the winter, or even a “revenue guarantee” for winter flights that would involve the town purchasing a couple of tickets if only one or two seats on a flight were sold. The cost of such a subsidy would depend on the precise terms but might not be that large, he said.

    Juraschek also worried that Cape Air’s seven employees at Provincetown Airport and the nine TSA agents who work there could all lose work this winter and not be available for rehire when Cape Air seeks to resume service.

    Orter said he thinks that Cape Air or another carrier could be open to a subsidy regime to support winter service, but he doubted there was enough time to put together an agreement for this November.

    “I don’t think we can mobilize quickly enough to do it,” said Orter. “It’s unlikely that anyone will be flying out of here this winter other than private planes.”

    AIRBORNE ILLNESS

    Covid Cancels Cape Air’s Provincetown Route

    Airline suspends local service until April

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Air won’t be offering flights out of the Provincetown Municipal Airport until April 1 because of a pandemic-related shortage of pilots as well as airport construction.

    This is the first time in years that the airline has canceled its service for an extended period in Provincetown, where the airline started in 1989. Since Cape Air is the only carrier operating, there will be no commercial flights in or out of Provincetown from Jan. 19 through March 31. The airport will be open for private flights.

    “This will be really inconvenient,” said Glenn Rigoff, who typically enjoys an easy commute between his Provincetown and Florida homes. “What a bummer. I will have to take the bus to Boston.”

    Rigoff’s schedule lacks the burden of a daily commute since he earns his income from short-term rental properties he owns in Argentina, Boston, and Provincetown. He said he has a place in Florida where he spends a few months in the winter but returns to his primary residence in Provincetown every three weeks, especially if snow is in the forecast.

    “If I see a real winter storm coming, I get my butt on a plane and come to Provincetown,” Rigoff said. “I love the snow. It makes me feel like a kid.”

    Cape Air normally operates three flights a day each way between Provincetown and Boston at this time of year.

    “We do not take this lightly,” said Charles Ferrara, the airline’s vice president of corporate and airport affairs. “We have been very committed to this route.”

    Several factors forced the pause. One is an “industry-wide pilot shortage” as a result of Covid-19, Ferrara said. As Cape Air CEO Linda Markham explained in the Independent’s Jan. 6 issue, after major airlines furloughed employees during the pandemic, many pilots retired. When the big airlines started hiring again, Cape Air pilots jumped at the opportunity to take jobs there, Ferrara said.

    Add to that the number of staff calling in sick because they have Covid-19 themselves. The normal complement of 90 pilots is now down by 10 to 15 percent, Ferrara added.

    Rather than cancel flights at the last minute because of sick day call-ins, Cape Air managers decided to shut down the route while they recruit more pilots.

    The timing is not as bad as it might have been: Provincetown Municipal Airport was to be closed anyway from Feb. 7 to Feb. 18 for construction, said Airport Manager Peter Kacergis.

    “I know this does inconvenience a lot of people,” said Jim Abeln, a traveler who has used Cape Air often to travel for business. He is semi-retired now.

    “For the people who just moved here, they expect to get out of here,” Abeln said.

    Bus companies that take people to Boston have their own labor shortages, causing canceled runs, which, Abeln said, has left him stranded more than once.

    AVIATION

    Cape Air Copes With New Year’s Weekend Covid Spike

    The company avoided pandemic furloughs, but a national pilot shortage still hits home

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Over New Year’s weekend, Cape Air grappled with a spike in symptomatic Covid-19 cases among its work force. As of Monday, Jan. 3, the airline had 30 staff members testing positive, 17 of those just over the previous three days. Most of those on sick leave were frontline employees, including pilots, maintenance technicians, and airport services personnel.

    “That’s more than we’ve ever had since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Linda Markham, who took over from Dan Wolf this week as the company’s CEO.

    Cape Air’s in-house Covid-19 task force scrambled to rebound as pilots called in sick one after the next. For staffing holes in the Northeast, the airline leaned on its “SAMP” — that is, its standby “Small Army of Management Pilots,” who can be deployed at any time. And on Sunday, Jan. 2, the task force announced a new incentive pay plan, hoping this would encourage healthy pilots to pick up extra shifts.

    Cape Air, in total, has approximately 90 pilots. As of Monday, 21 of them had signed up to cover 78 additional shifts. “That helps us greatly,” Markham said.

    But the airline is hard pressed to recover flights on its midwestern routes and its Montana network.

    Cape Air canceled 2.4 percent of its flights in December because of Covid sick calls. A year earlier, in December 2020, the airline had no cancellations at all. Only three flights into or out of Provincetown Municipal Airport were canceled last month.

    These statistics, at first glance, may seem like only a blip on the radar, but “that’s still going to have an impact on our customers,” Markham said.

    Cape Air currently has about 750 employees. Throughout the pandemic, that number has held steady, varying between 700 and 750, but “our biggest challenge right now,” said Markham, “is pilot staffing.”

    That is by no means a problem unique to Cape Air. The airline industry at large has been dealing with a pilot shortage — and Covid-19 made matters worse when it pushed both major and regional airlines to furlough workers and encourage early retirements. Cape Air was able to avoid these measures, promising its pilots that their jobs were secure, but the airline’s own staffing issues emerged after their competitors withdrew those furlough policies and resumed hiring. What followed was, as Markham put it, a “feeding frenzy.”

    Only three of Cape Air’s Provincetown flights were canceled in December, but it’s been harder to keep the airline’s midwestern and Montana routes covered. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    “Our pilots were ripe for the picking,” she said, “because they come from such a well-structured training environment and are well qualified to go on to regional airlines.”

    Cape Air’s fleet of Cessna 402 and Tecnam P2012 planes, which are the backbone of the airline, “require you to be a good stick-and-rudder pilot,” said Ryan Baker, the airline’s chief pilot.

    This, in turn, makes Cape Air pilots desirable candidates for other airlines operating larger aircraft, which, by contrast, are highly automated. “You’re sort of just sitting there, monitoring instruments and the automation of the aircraft,” Baker said, “as opposed to actually flying the airplane.” But as a result, “people come here to spend a few years and then move on,” he added.

    In an attempt to retain pilots, the airline has been patching together what it calls pathway programs. If Cape Air pilots serve as captains for at least two years, they will then be guaranteed a position at Spirit Airlines. Cape Air has a similar agreement for fresh-out-of-college pilots in its university gateway program, which can clinch for these young professionals an eventual job at JetBlue.

    “The gateway program is one of the first ones put together in the country,” said Baker. “We’re pretty proud of that.”

    Cape Air, meanwhile, has started gathering the vaccination status of its employees for a database, prepping for an upcoming federal regulation aimed at employers with 100 or more employees. OSHA will be requiring all such private companies to ensure that their workers are either vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19.

    “We just need to get through the next few weeks,” Markham said. “I’m really hoping that people who get this variant of Covid can get back on track and be able to get down to business.”

    AIR SAFETY

    Cause of Cape Air Accident Yet to Be Determined

    Pilot tried to abort landing; ‘We don’t know why,’ says Wolf

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — “It’s been a tough four days,” said Cape Air founder and CEO Dan Wolf on Monday afternoon. “This is incredibly hard.”

    He had just conducted a Zoom meeting for all of his employees to talk about the accident that had happened on Thursday, Sept. 9, when Cape Air Flight 2072 from Boston attempted to land in Provincetown in a rainstorm and ended up in the woods off Race Point Road in flames.

    The wreckage of the Cape Air Cessna in the woods off Race Point Road. (Photo aviationsafety.net)

    No one was killed. The plane, one of Cape Air’s vintage Cessna 402Cs, was carrying six passengers along with the pilot, Pieter Dijkstra, 51, of Appleton, Maine. All seven escaped from the burning plane and were taken to Cape Cod Hospital. Dijkstra, along with three or four of the passengers, according to unconfirmed reports, were moved to the burn unit at Mass. General Hospital in Boston. Only one of the passengers has been identified: Autumn Kerr of Sylvania, Ohio, who was interviewed on television outside Cape Cod Hospital on the night of the accident. She said her traveling companion, whom she did not name, was still inside. Kerr suffered second-degree burns, the Cape Cod Times reported. The conditions of the pilot and the other passengers are not known.

    The plane had taken off at 7:11 a.m. on Sept. 9 from Knox County Regional Airport in Owls Head, Maine and landed at Logan Airport in Boston at 8:12 a.m., according to online flight data. It left Logan for the 25-to-30-minute trip to Provincetown at 3:04 p.m. The plane was scheduled to return to Boston and then to Knox County Regional Airport that night. The pilot’s name was reported by the Courier-Gazette in Knox County where he lives, not by Cape Air or any of the officials on Cape Cod.

    Wolf would not speculate on the cause of the accident, citing an ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Mass. Dept. of Transportation Aeronautics Division. But he outlined what was known about the circumstances.

    Cape Air CEO Dan Wolf. (Photo courtesy Cape Air)

    “It was about 3:30 p.m.,” said Wolf. “The pilot made the normal approach to Runway 7. He tried to abort the landing and impacted the trees at the far end of the runway. We don’t know why. It was not great weather that day — there was moderate to heavy rain. But we can’t say that weather was a contributing factor.”

    Wolf’s description of the aborted landing attempt appeared to corroborate what passenger Kerr told WCVB-TV in the interview: “We were obviously not going to land and picked back up,” she said. “All of a sudden, we just hit the ground in the trees and burst into flames in the front, and then the right side burst into flames.”

    Map showing Provincetown Airport, its one 3,500-foot-long runway, and the site where the Cape Air plane came to rest across Race Point Road.

    Robert Katz, a corporate pilot and flight instructor in Dallas, Texas with a keen interest in airline safety, believes that the weather conditions at the time of the accident probably were a factor, along with possible poor judgment on the part of the pilot. Studying records of the weather conditions at Provincetown Municipal Airport on the afternoon of Sept. 9, Katz said he believed that the pilot was attempting to land with a tailwind, rather than into the wind, which would have been the normal procedure.

    The ceiling at the time of the flight — that is, the height of the lowest clouds — was only 200 feet, said Katz. So the pilot would have been flying entirely by instruments until he was very close to the airport.

    Katz also cited the length of the Provincetown runway as a factor.

    “Of all the airports Cape Air flies to, Provincetown is probably the most challenging because of the length of the runway,” he said. “It’s only 3,500 feet long — the shortest in the region.”

    Katz said he thinks the pilot may have realized too late that, because of the tailwind and the runway length, he had too little runway left as he was about to touch down and decided to abort the landing and pull up.

    This is the Cessna 402C that was involved in the Sept. 9 accident in Provincetown. Cape Air is in the process of replacing its aging fleet of aircraft. (Photo courtesy JetPhotos.com)

    Another factor could have been the moderate to heavy rain at the time. The Cessna 402C does not have the ability to reverse its propeller thrust to aid in slowing the plane on landing. So it must rely entirely on the brakes. In very wet conditions, braking becomes much more difficult, said Katz.

    Wolf said he did not think the length of the Provincetown runway was a problem. “From a safety standpoint,” he said, “the current runway is more than adequate. It’s not a short runway for the equipment we use.”

    He suggested that lengthening the runway could have undesirable effects on the Outer Cape community. “The main reason you would want a longer runway is to serve bigger aircraft,” he said. “One of the conversations we’ve had over the years in Provincetown is why we don’t have more direct service to New York. Well, be careful what you ask for. There are all kinds of community issues around that.”

    The plane involved in last week’s accident was built in 1980. Cape Air is in the process of replacing its aging fleet of Cessnas with the Tecnam P2012 Traveller. The airline has purchased 25 of the new planes thus far and has options to buy 85 more. Wolf is also hoping to acquire all-electric planes when they become available.

    “The reason we’re doing a fleet replacement is economic, not for safety,” he said. “The Tecnam will be much more efficient to operate.”

    The interior of the Cessna 402C. (Photo courtesy Cape Air)

    The WCVB-TV interview with Kerr suggested that pilot Dijkstra had acted heroically in helping her out of the burning plane. She said she was trapped in her seat, unable to undo her safety belt. “I ripped the seat out and turned it around to use it like a shield from the flames,” she said. The pilot, who had escaped from the plane, returned to help her, she said: “I think that, because we were the last, he came back and unbuckled it. He looked pretty injured because I saw him on the gurney when I went to my ambulance.”

    It will likely be one and a half to two years before the FAA and NTSB issue a final report on the cause of the accident. An unofficial preliminary report may be available in a few weeks.

    Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article stated that the final accident report would take at least three months. The actual amount of time for the FAA and NTSB to issue a final report is usually at least 18 months.

     

    ECONOMY

    While Cape Air Struggles, Local Airport Reaps a Bonanza

    Provincetown collects $2.74 million in federal aid in just 6 months

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — In February 2019, the Provincetown Municipal Airport Commission stated that the airport’s revolving account would be empty by the fiscal year 2021-2022. The commission wrote, “We are working on a plan to cover the projected need for the FY 2022-2024.”

    Then, the pandemic struck, and, throughout the summer, Provincetown Airport became a ghost town. Traffic on the airport’s only scheduled route, between Provincetown and Boston, dropped by 95 percent in March. Today, it’s hardly recovered, and is still down 80 percent from last year.

    But thanks to federal largesse under the CARES Act Airport Grant Program — which drew criticism for its disproportionate grants to smaller airports — the Provincetown Airport has emerged from its worst summer in history unscathed. In April, the airport received a federal grant of $1.04 million, approximately 11 times its projected operating budget for the coming year.

    Provincetown Airport has not lost significant revenue in the economic downturn. Unlike larger airports that rely on revenue from passenger facility charges, smaller airports such as Provincetown’s receive most of their revenue from leases with commercial airlines — around $40,000 per year for Provincetown from its sole airline, Cape Air.

    More important to smaller airports is an annual requirement of 10,000 enplanements, or passenger boardings, to be eligible for Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Project (AIP) grants that enable them to conduct millions of dollars worth of required safety improvements each year.

    This year, Provincetown Airport won’t come close to reaching that 10,000 qualifying number, but, according to the F.A.A., passenger enplanement numbers from FY 2019 will be used to determine AIP grants for FY 2021.

    Luckily, Provincetown Airport exceeded the minimum by 432 passengers in 2019. So, in addition to the $1.04 million that it received under the CARES Act, it will continue to have access to millions of dollars in potential AIP grants throughout the fiscal year.

    Just this past Sept. 1, the airport received an AIP grant of $1.7 million, to install taxiway lighting and acquire an emergency generator, meaning the $1.04 million received in April can be stashed away for future projects.

    Almost completely out of money before the pandemic, the airport now has a loaded bank account, and will be able to cover operating expenses like mowing the lawn and other maintenance work, utility bills, debt servicing, legal fees, payroll, or even promotion of the airport for the next four years — the time limit for spending the CARES Act grant. The airport can also ask to use the money to fund larger improvement projects.

    “There are a number of future safety upgrades and maintenance projects on the list that this money can and will most likely go towards,” Airport Manager Butch Lisenby said. “For now, we should be able to keep our heads above water.”

    Back in April, in an attempt to fix the flawed formula that benefitted smaller airports like Provincetown, the F.A.A. amended the terms of the grant program by capping all grants at four times the amount of an airport’s annual operating budget, “unless the remaining amount available to grant to the airport would be less than $1 million.”

    With a $1.04 million grant and a proposed operating budget of $93,550 for FY 2021, Provincetown is not subject to the amended terms and gets to keep the entire grant.

    Though the Provincetown Airport was able to weather this year’s storm by opening its arms to overgenerous federal grants, its sole commercial client, Cape Air, is holding its breath hoping for another round of government aid to airlines.

    “Revenue from the Provincetown route was down 85 percent over the summer,” Cape Air CEO Dan Wolf told the Independent. “That is a route that is not performing in a sustainable way, but we will hang in there, because there is going to be light after Covid, if you will.”

    Though negotiations for a standalone airline relief package and a larger stimulus plan are stalled in D.C., Cape Air is currently holding out on the option of a restructuring plan. Last week, Cape Air headquarters in Hyannis sent a letter to all of its employees stating that they will not make any changes through the end of the year.

    In the first round of stimulus aid, Cape Air received $22.8 million from the CARES Act and the Small Business Administration. Though the airline has not laid off any of its approximately 750 employees — a condition for receiving money under the CARES Act — 60 employees have taken voluntary furloughs.

    Still, with overall revenue down 70 to 80 percent over the summer — Provincetown to Boston being the route that performed the worst — if more aid doesn’t materialize by the end of the year they will have to restructure the company, according to Wolf.

    “It is painful to watch what is going on in D.C.,” Wolf said. “Cape Air cannot continue to do what we have done in all of our communities unless we get more aid.”

    Currently, Cape Air and Provincetown Airport are negotiating a new long-term contract, indicating that Wolf is optimistic about the future and its ability to provide a vital link between the tip of Cape Cod and Boston’s Logan International Airport.

    Wolf expects flight activity to return to 80 percent of normal within a year of a Covid-19 vaccine.

    “During the aftermath of 9/11, I asked myself, will people want to get back in a plane?” Wolf said. “It certainly took a few years, but there was a recovery then, and there will be one now.”

    Editor’s note: This article has been updated with new information since the Oct. 15 print edition went to press.

    ECONOMY

    A Tough Time for Local Businesses

    Uncertainty prevails at planning time

    By

    WELLFLEET — The “Coming Attractions” marquee at the Wellfleet Cinemas is empty, an indication that nobody knows what’s coming next. Spring is a time for preparation and planning for the July-August tourist season, and even though the coronavirus has not yet emerged widely here, its effects are already hitting hard.

    Just last week, many people said it was “too early to tell” what summer would bring. This week brought a dose of reality in the form of the first confirmed case on the Cape. Emergency closures of bars, restaurants, schools, and other institutions, and cancellation or postponement of conferences, concerts, and other large gatherings have followed.

    The outlook boils down to three questions: Will the tourists come? Will the workers be here? And will anybody have any money?

    Peter Hall, owner of Van Rensselaer’s and Catch of the Day restaurants in South Wellfleet, said his plans to bring 18 summer workers from eight countries are up in the air. “If you had asked me a month ago, I was all hired up,” he said. “Now, I don’t know if I’m going to get any of them. We might have a good summer, we might have a rotten summer. We will do what we have to do.”

    The U.S. State Dept. last week announced a 60-day “pause” in international exchange programs that allow students from other countries to come work here. That includes the J-1 program that covers Hall’s workers.

    “If worse comes to worst, we might not get our summer workers,” said Radu Luca, executive director of the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce.

    U.S. restrictions on travel from Europe are initially scheduled to last just 30 days, but no one knows what will happen after that. Travel restrictions within Luca’s native Romania may pose problems for summer workers on H-2B visas, he said.

    As for travel within the United States, while restrictions are still limited to specific areas, that could change.

    “In a situation like this you plan for the worst and hope for the best,” said Cape Air CEO Dan Wolf. “Advance reservations are really starting to show the impact.”

    Wolf estimated his airline’s reservations for June through August are down 30 to 40 percent, while closer reservations are down about 10 percent. “If the timing is relatively short, there is time for this to recover, and for us to have a good summer,” he said. “But if this was June right now, we would be expecting a serious decline.”

    Travel and tourism generated over $1.2 billion in direct spending by domestic visitors and $100 million by international visitors to Cape Cod in 2018, said Wendy Northcross of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. It is an important part of the Cape’s $14 billion economy, employing nearly 10,000 people, she added.

    Sometimes a global crisis encourages more people to travel domestically. That might give a boost to the Cape. The overwhelming majority of visitors arrive here by car and live within a day’s drive.

    Hotel reservations on Cape Cod seem to be coming in at normal levels for summer, but reservations can be easily canceled. “Our primary visitors tend to book very close to the time of travel, thus we may not know of any potential business loss until closer to the summer season,” Northcross said.

    Cruise ships, which have become the most visible incubators of coronavirus, have been a growing part of Provincetown’s tourist economy in the past few years, though the ships that stop here are generally smaller, carrying dozens or hundreds of passengers, not thousands. Luca said six cruise ship companies have scheduled 22 port calls in Provincetown this year, and so far none have been canceled.

    Jim Russo, executive director of the Eastham Chamber of Commerce, said he is already focused on readying solutions for those who may be hit hard later. “My immediate concern is to get the information on business recovery resources, and the tools to implicate such procedures to our members that are or will be affected in some way by COVID-19,” Russo said.

    The challenge for local business people is to make decisions based on facts, rather than fear. The latter, he said “seems the present-day hallmark for even the slightest change in our daily expectations.”

    CLIMATE

    Wolf Sees Future of Cape Air in All-Electric Planes

    The Alice, under development, could fly 50 percent faster and farther than gas-powered aircraft

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Air founder and CEO Dan Wolf says he is excited about the future of his fleet. At the same time that his company is replacing its aged Cessna 402s with a sleek new Italian model, the Tecnam P2012 Traveller, he is also looking ahead to an entirely new generation of all-electric planes that Cape Air is helping to develop with an Israeli company, Eviation Aircraft.

    Reducing its carbon footprint is a high priority for Cape Air, Wolf says, and Alice, the electric prototype, promises to deliver on that count, though major technological and regulatory hurdles remain.

    Cape Air is one of the largest regional airlines in the U.S., with nearly 100 planes making 400 flights a day between 35 ports and carrying half a million passengers per year. Destinations include the Cape & Islands, other Northeast airports, the Midwest, Montana, and the Caribbean.

    A significant number of those flights are subsidized by the federal government’s Essential Air Service (EAS) program, which supports routes serving smaller, more isolated places. If you’ve ever wondered, while studying Cape Air’s route map, how the airline can afford to fly to places like Kirksville, Mo. and Lebanon, Mont., that’s the reason.

    Cape Air’s share of EAS funds will total about $43 million in 2019, which is close to half of the airline’s total estimated revenue. This subsidy is a big reason why Wolf expects to be able to upgrade and expand his fleet and service in the coming years.

    Tecnam photo
    The Tecnam P2012 Traveller. (Photo courtesy Cape Air)

    An Italian Traveller

    In September the company took delivery of its first P2012 Traveller, at a reported cost of $2.7 million. Cape Air has placed orders for 20 Travellers, with options for up to 92 more. They will be integrated into the fleet over the next decade.

    Wolf says it was tough finding the right partner to create a plane to replace the workhorse Cessnas. He had to go outside the U.S. to do it.

    “The only company that would give us what we were asking for was Tecnam,” he says. “Nobody in the U.S. would build us an airplane.”

    While the Cessnas have about a 12-percent higher maximum speed and a 25-percent greater range, the Travellers have better fuel economy. Lower baggage compartments make loading on the ramp easier. All the passenger seats and the entire cabin floor can be removed in minutes, so inspections and routine maintenance go faster. Cape Air’s numerous short hops made the lower range of the Traveller not a deal-breaker.

    But Wolf is looking beyond the Italian plane to the electric model he calls “a game-changer.” He’s hoping to put as many as 10 of the planes into service by 2024.

    Eviation’s Alice is said to be the first commuter-class aircraft that relies solely on electric power. It comes at a cost of nearly $5 million each.

    “They’ve been a very good design and development partner, really trying to understand the airplane that we need and trying to build around that,” says Wolf. Early estimates predict the direct operating costs of the electric fleet will be about 40 percent of what Cape Air is currently spending.

    As a development partner with Eviation, Cape Air is working on airworthiness certification from the FAA to start operating Alice. That campaign is set to begin in 2020 with a flight-test program in Arizona expected to last 24 to 30 months. Even if all goes well, there are major obstacles to certification, including getting the FAA to approve what would be the very first all-electric multi-engine airplane for commercial service in the U.S.

    The plan is for the electric planes to initially serve the Cape and Islands routes, including Provincetown, Boston, Hyannis, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. The goal is to have charging stations at every airport.

    Alice’s lithium ion batteries will provide instant power to the engines so the plane can take off on shorter runways. They also will allow two hours of flying time for every hour on the charger.  But one big challenge is the heavy batteries. At 8,200 pounds, they’re well over half the aircraft’s maximum takeoff weight of 14,000 pounds.

    The planes have an unconventional look, with two rear-facing propellers on the wings and one on the tail cone. Eviation says the design is tied to the craft’s electric motors. They are reported to be extremely durable, due to their simplicity, with a life span of up to 20,000 hours.  The Cessna 402 engines have just a 2,000-hour life span.

    Eviation's Alice photo
    Eviation’s all-electric Alice at the Paris Air Show. (Photo courtesy Eviation Aircraft)

    Faster and Farther

    Electric Alice planes will fly nearly 50 percent faster and farther than their gas-powered counterparts, with top speeds of close to 300 mph and a range of 650 miles. While this may cut flight times on short hauls, Wolf is looking at using the efficiency to expand.

    “For example, it makes New York a lot more viable option,” he says.

    Cape Air’s electric future may well depend on continuation of the federal EAS subsidies. Funding for 2020 is still awaiting passage of the federal budget. Last March the Trump administration proposed a $30 million cut to the program, arguing that many of the flights take off unfilled.

    Wolf says that paying for the new aircraft will be accomplished with a combination of debt and equity. He’s confident, he says, that there will be so much interest in Alice that raising funds won’t be an issue.

    After 30 years in business, Wolf says he welcomes the chance to reduce his airline’s environmental footprint, and he hopes the government will see things the same way.

    “There’s going to be an opportunity for the government to actually support the transition to carbon-free transportation,” he says. “We’re excited about that.”

    © 2025 The Provincetown Independent, all rights reserved.

    terms of service