[Editor's Note: This is the first of a series of articles on the June 11, 2024 Commission meeting.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

The Grant County Commission June 11, 2024 work session followed a special meeting, which can be read at https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/85257-grant-county-commission-holds-special-meeting-061124

No one provided public input at this meeting, because they had all spoken during the public comments time at the preceding special meeting, all in opposition to a contract that was on the work session agenda for discussion.

The presentation featured Levi Stockton, president and pilot for Advanced Air, which provides essential air service to the Grant County Airport.

"We're here to update you on what we're doing," Stockton said. "Six years ago, the same team as we have now, came to you and applied to provide essential air service to you here in Grant County. We came in and we told you 'we want to be your airline and we promise to do a very good job.'"

He showed a slide of their scheduled service that they provide to Grant County, as well as their charter operation that flies people all over the world. "I landed from London about five hours ago, so I'm a little jet-lagged." The third slide showed their operational headquarters at Hawthorne, CA.

"Safety is our number 1 focus," Stockton said. "To ensure our safety record we are audited by four separate companies. They come in and for many years, we have had zero findings on our audits. Most airlines don't do that, so we are proud of our record."

He showed a map of Advanced Air's route map, which includes several destinations in California, as well as Las Vegas, NV, Phoenix, AZ, and Silver City, Albuquerque, Carlsbad and Las Cruces in New Mexico.

"When we came in six years ago, we had one semi-scheduled route in California, and Silver City would become our first essential air service route. Since then, we've grown, but we've been very, very thoughtful in our growth."

District 5 Commissioner Harry Browne said he did not see the Phoenix to Hawthorne on the route map. Stockton confirmed that.

"We have our King Air planes solely focused on New Mexico," Stockton continued. "When we started we had one King Air in New Mexico. Whenever we had a problem, we would fly one in from Hawthorne. Now we have three or four aircraft flying every day and six in the network, so we have much more reliability in the network. We have a pilot crew based in Phoenix with 24 members based there, with our highest touch points, Albuquerque and Phoenix in the network."

He recalled one incident, when the plane in Silver City had a problem, so a flight from Carlsbad to Phoenix stopped in Silver City to pick up passengers.

The route map slide also showed the airline perfect safety record, with zero accidents, a 98 percent completion record; and a 95 percent on-time record. "Those are very hard to meet. And it's been the same since we started in Silver City, six years ago. We have 10,000 annual departures, 12,000 annual fleet hours flown, moving 45,000 annual passengers."

He showed the statistics for Silver City, with the first year at almost 11,000 passengers and load factors for flights to Albuquerque at 56.8 percent and to Phoenix at 54.18 percent. Numbers dropped in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid and less travel. However, the numbers rebounded in 2022 to more that 12,000 passengers, close to 13,000 in 2023, with the load factor to Albuquerque rising to 62.98 percent and to Phoenix at 74 percent for 2023. For 2024 through May, the airline has carried more than 5,000 passengers, a load factor to Albuquerque of 60 percent and to Phoenix at 72.44 percent for the five months.

"We have increased our percentage with more people using the airline," Stockton said. "I think it's because they have more trust in us. Your prior provider had a completion rate of the high 70s percent, so we have shown we can do better."

The current schedule runs through November 2, 2024. "We usually change the schedule when the time changes. What we've done ever since we've been here is 17 roundtrips to Albuquerque weekly and seven to Phoenix. Ticket pricing is $91, each way, including tax to Albuquerque and $131, each way to Phoenix. We also provide ticket packages, which brings the price down to $623.50 for 10-one way tickets to Albuquerque and $1,023,50 to Phoenix for 10 one-way tickets. The tickets are all fully-refundable and transferable, so you can use them for a friend."

He said they spend a lot of time in the communities they serve, plus using social media. "We sponsor the Tour of the Gila. We are in multiple newspapers. We also purchase a lot of fuel here. In 2023, we purchased 170,000 gallons of fuel, and we spent 625+ room nights in Silver City. We try to buy as much fuel at the Grant County Airport as we can, and your team out there has been great at supporting it."

He noted that as the organization has grown, they have a 24/7 dispatch team for flight planning, real-time weather and airport updates. "We try really hard. We have a team to recover when the weather cancels a flight or a pilot calls in sick."

He noted when they had seven incidents in February on one day, due to maintenance issues, so they brought in planes from their system and still flew all the flights that day. January, March and April, they had zero incidents and in May, three.

"We are here to update you," Stockton said. "Our contract here expires the end of February, and we have been working hard to make that a four-year contract to keep providing service to you. Silver City is kind of our baby, and we work hard to be your airline. When we mess up, we own it. If you have anything you think we can improve, we will spend the time to dig into it and figure out a way to improve it, if we need to."

District 1 Commissioner Chris Ponce said he received calls from constituents when a flight is canceled. He said they tell him that the feedback they are getting is that they don't have pilots. "I understand weather, but a lot of people who use the flights are going to meetings, and the poor person you have there has to deal with angry customers. If they miss their flight, I know our county manager had to once turn around and drive to the meeting. Others coming back from Albuquerque that day had to rent a car to drive back."

He said he worries because airlines get big and they have a contract, but they start forgetting about Grant County. "It would be nice to have someone there that can tell the public that 'we are working on trying to get a pilot; we're trying to get a flight. I had to get a phone number from Commissioner Billings because I was booked on a flight that didn't exist when the schedule changed. It took me a while to get hold of somebody. Your statistics look good, but we need to be more customer friendly. I get calls that the young man or young lady there doesn't have any information."

Stockton pointed out that it had happened only 11 times this year on one-way flights, so "we do the best we can. All our cancelations are due to maintenance, not to crew. I'm a pilot, you get in the plane, you go to start it and you have an issue. At that point, to have an answer for the public is impossible. The pilots are trouble-shooting on what is it, can we fix it and how long to fix it and if we need another airplane, where are we going to bring it from. Sometimes, that takes an hour-plus to figure all that out and how we are going to recover those flights. I can see that it is frustrating. One thing we are focusing on is communication. We are sending emails, but often you know just as much as we do as you're sitting there. We do have our entire team trying to figure out how to fix the problem. We do work hard to fix it."

 Browne said one issue that he hadn't heard addressed was a phone number. "I have the privilege of having your phone number, but most people don't. I think a phone number would be an easy fix. Even if someone calls and is told: 'we don't know at this point,' that's a lot better. On the positive side, I want to thank you for the book [of tickets] program. I was happy to see it when you applied the first time to replace Boutique, and I'm glad to see it continue. I do use it."

Stockton said Advanced Air had just started a survey and of the first 400-500 who had replied "our approval rating is at 4.8 out of 5, so we're getting good feedback from our passengers. I do know it's frustrating when your flight gets canceled or delayed, but I hear what you say about communication and we'll work on it."

District 4 Commissioner Billy Billings thanked Stockton for the presentation. "I've felt a few of the frustrations with Advanced Air, but comparing to my recent frustrations with Delta and United, your performance is over the top compared to them. You talk about not being able to be hold of somebody, we were stuck in Dallas for two days, because of weather. But the communication was impossible with us not knowing whether to rent a car and drive to El Paso or when we would get a flight out was extremely frustrating. So your reaching a 98 percent completion rate is great. I think it would be good, if there were some way for people to get the information of whether we should start driving."

Billings said he had one question: "Is the airport still being locked 30 minutes before the flight?" The answer was no.

Next came county directors' reports, which will begin the next article.