The Federal Aviation Administration now requires commercial pilots to have a minimum 1,500 hours of flying time. The rule might not seem like a big change, but it’s putting a pinch on the airline companies that serve medium sized towns in South Dakota.
Laurie Gill is the mayor of Pierre. She says before federal regulations changed, Pierre served an upwards of 15 thousand passengers a year. But since the number of required flight experience for pilots increased, a shortage of pilots has caused, cancellations, delays, and a drop in passengers.
“It has put a huge burden on Great Lakes Airlines which serves Pierre. The reliability of the service has dropped. Because of that, a lot of people are choosing to drive elsewhere to fly. So our numbers has drastically dropped below the 10,000 mark and lower and we are working hard to reestablish reliable service in the capitol city," says Gill.
Pierre is working to join the Essential Airline Service program to subsidize airline services. Gill says joining the EAS program should stabilize air service in the short term.
“The fix to this pilot training hour issue, in my mind is at the federal level- something has to be done at the federal level," Gill says. "And the pressure and burden it has put on small regional air carriers to serve in rural American has been huge.”
U.S. Senator John Thune says lawmakers in the Senate passed the legislation changing flight experience hours for pilots after a crash near Buffalo New York killed 50 people back in 2009.
“There are an awful lot of folks in the senate who feel very strongly about that. And if we have tried to change or modify that at the committee level or on the floor we would have run into- it would have blown up," Thune says. "I think the way we addressed it in the bill is the best we would have under the circumstances.”
Huron is expected to lose commercial airline services this September and Watertown is currently reviewing proposals for a new airline provider with hopes of reinstalling reliable service to the area.