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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Nineteen Northwest airports are at risk of losing some or all of their air service during the current airline financial crisis, a new study says.
The study by the Business Travel Coalition lists those airports among 150 U.S. airports that could see diminished travel choices.
Sea-Tac Airport and Portland International Airport were not among those the BTC listed as being at risk.
The BTC said high fuel prices and slackening demand for air travel is putting flights in jeopardy.
The study listed Spokane, Tri-Cities, Bellingham and Yakima in Washington, Eugene, Medford and Redmond in Oregon, Boise, Idaho Falls and Sun Valley in Idaho, Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls, Helena, Kalispell and Missoula in Montana and Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau in Alaska among the airports at risk.
Some cutbacks have already occurred. Bellingham has lost Delta Airlines service to Salt Lake City and Yakima has seen its second daily flight to Salt Lake City, shut down and then reinstated twice this year.
Somewhat strangely, the study doesn't mention Butte, Montana, from which Horizon Air is withdrawing service, and such smaller cities as Wenatchee and Walla Walla in Washington and Coos Bay and Pendleton in Oregon.
Airport consultant Michael Boyd, who advises smaller airports about attracting and keeping service, was critical of the BTC report.
"In this current ariline planning environment, and in light of the capacity cut-backs already announced, reporting to the world that some airports will lose at least some service is about as intuitive as predicting snow to fall in a blizzard," he said.
"But telling the media in some communities that their airport is facing near-catasptrophe and potential loss of all air service, based only on the supposition that airlines could fail, and without hard analytical analysis of specific service, revenues, yields and hub-flows, cannot be regarded as hard forecasting. It borders on Chicken Little," he said.
The BTC said it used several factors to evaluate airport potential airport service cutbacks including the proximity of other airports, the impact of airline mergers, prior fluctuations in air service, the mix of leisure and business travelers, service by at-risk carriers and media reports.
