Pendleton Airport

The Pendleton Airport (also the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport) is an airport located in Pendleton, Oregon. It is both a general aviation airport and an airport with scheduled commercial service, through the essential air service program. Currently, the Pendleton Airport is the only airport in Eastern Oregon with scheduled commercial service. Currently, the Pendleton Airport is the only essential air service airport in Oregon, and for that matter, in the Pacific Northwest. Like many airports, Pendleton Airport was founded as a military airport, and like many smaller airports, it exists as a utility airport for farming and resource extraction, as well as for wildland firefighting.

It is also significant as the only airport in Eastern Oregon. Bend, Portland and Boise, Idaho are all about 200 miles away. However, the Tri-Cities airport, in Pasco, Washington is barely more than an hour away. I do have to say that the economics and fairness of providing trice-daily flights on airplanes that can carry eight passengers, for a yearly cost of 3.8 million dollars does seem to be questionable, especially when other transportation alternatives exist. There are a few caveats that make this subsidy less one-sided than it seems, as I mentioned before. Since the airport is going to exist for other reasons, including vital functions like firefighting, it makes sense to subsidize it for commercial flights as well. It also could be an emergency landing airport. With all of those things in mind, however, it does seem hard to justify the expense of keeping it open to passenger service. In addition, the airline that serves it currently is having trouble even keeping that service running.

While it does serve an important role for some people, it might not be tenable to keep this airport running as a passenger airport in the future. Of course, much of this depends on the continued growth of the Pendleton region, and how air travel rebounds after the pandemic.