JmstnAirport2Jamestown (CSi)  According to Matt Leitner, manager at Jamestown Regional Airport, Great Lakes Airline has released a schedule change for Jamestown.

Starting Monday, Jan 20,  Great Lakes Airline will reduce service to only 1 flight a day from and to Minneapolis, Sunday through Friday.  There will be no flights on Saturday.  This will bring the total weekly flights to 6, on the 19 passenger  Beech 1900 turbo-prop.

Passengers are encouraged to check with their travel agent or the airline to see how the schedule change will impact their reservations and for exact flight times.   The “no Saturday flights” goes into effect Jan 18, 2014.

In reviewing the Great Lakes timetable, Devils Lakes and a number of other cities are also seeing reduced frequency of flights.

Earlier this week, the Airport Authority approved covering the expenses of sending Chairman Jim Boyd, Jamestown Regional Airport Manager Matt Leitner and Mayor Katie Andersen to Washington later this month to answer questions about the bid from SkyWest Airlines to provide essentail air service to Jamestown.

The bids are advertised, reviewed, and awarded by the United States Department of Transportation for the FAA.

Regional Airport Authority Chairman Jim Boyd says DOT officials have some concerns about the SkyWest Airlines bid.

The SkyWest Airlines bid is a one flight daily roundtrip from Denver to Jamestown using a 50-seat jet airplane. The DOT minimum bid for a 50-seat jet airplane service to Jamestown is two daily flights.

skywestCRJ2005SkyWest’s bid would require a higher subsidy from the federal government because its plane would be traveling a greater distance.

Prior to the schedule reduction, Great Lakes Airlines, which currently provides service to Jamestown Regional Airport, submitted a bid to continue providing service to Jamestown with three roundtrip flights daily from Devils Lake/Jamestown to Minneapolis, using 19-seat turboprop airplanes.    It is unknown if Great Lakes plans to withdraw or revise that bid, after the airline reduced flights.

The original bid meets the DOT’s minimum bid requirement for turboprop airplanes.

The Regional Airport Authority has recommended the SkyWest Airlines bid to the DOT.

Boyd says he hopes the state’s congressional representatives, including Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Senator John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Representative Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., will be able to answer questions from DOT officials about the SkyWest bid.

Leitner said Great Lakes Airlines continues to have problems getting full flight crews for its flights due to changes in FAA requirements for co-pilots, increasing the minimum number of flight hours a co-pilot must have in order to be part of a flight crew for a passenger flight from 250 hours to 1,500 hours.  The change has put qualified co-pilots in high demand for all airlines.

It was reported in The Messenger by the Fort Dodge Regional Aiport director of aviation that Great Lakes has lost 50% of its pilots over the past year.