The Kenai City Council recently passed a resolution that would authorize the city manager to enter into an airline operating agreement and terminal area lease with Kenai Aviation. The company requested to start scheduled operations out of the Kenai Municipal Airport Terminal Building beginning on May 1st.
The company recently announced that they acquired a brand new Tecnam P2012 ‘Traveler’, which will be used to provide scheduled flights Monday through Friday. The initial published schedule, according to a letter sent to Kenai Municipal Airport Manager, Eland Conway, the following schedule is tentatively set for Monday – Friday:
- 4:30 a.m. Kenai-Anchorage
- 5:30 a.m. Anchorage-Homer
- 6:30 a.m. Homer-Anchorage
- 7:30 a.m. Anchorage-Valdez
- 8:30 a.m. Valdez-Anchorage
- 12:00 p.m. Anchorage-Kenai
- 3:00 p.m. Kenai-Anchorage
- 5:30 p.m. Anchorage-Homer
- 6:30 p.m. Homer-Anchorage
- 7:30 p.m. Anchorage-Valdez
- 8:30 p.m. Valdez-Anchorage
- 10:30 p.m. Anchorage-Kenai
Joel Caldwell, Director of Operations for Kenai Aviation, told KSRM:
“We’ll be the first ones out of Kenai in the morning for the early morning slopers that used to have to drive up the night before for their flights. We’ll be the first ones out of Kenai in the morning. Once we get to Anchorage, we’ll be doing the early morning to Homer and back to Anchorage, then early morning Valdez and back to Anchorage. We’ll do a midday back into Kenai, and then go back and do the same thing in the evening.”
Caldwell adds:
“Valdez and Homer have been with nothing but RAVN since 2013 when Grant pulled out of there. They’ve been begging for some additional reliable service. We’re focusing, mainly, on them early on here because Kenai’s got service with Grant. As we grow, of course, we’ll do more Kenai as there’s need for it, but we’re doing all three, but really wanted to take care of our friends and family in Homer and Valdez right off the start.”
Caldwell says that Kenai deserves to have its own airline:
“Well when I moved here 25 years ago, we had Southcentral Air. I’m telling you, if anybody that was here then knew how proud we were as a community of Kenai to have our own airline and we haven’t had a Kenai-based airline since. We’ve had charter services. We’ve had Grant coming down from Anchorage to serve us, and they do a great job, and we’ve had Ravn come in, but since Southcentral, we’ve not had our own airline here in Kenai.”