A few weeks ago, SeaPort Airways began a new Spokane-to-Seattle route. What’s unusual is that the flights do not use the city’s two main airports. It’s a Felts Field to Boeing Field route. We talk with SeaPort founder and CEO Kent Craford about why he chose the cities' two older airports.
This interview lightly edited for clarity and length.
Kent Craford: Our whole value proposition is to get people from Spokane to Seattle, allow them to do a full day's business and still get back home to Spokane or northern Idaho, for dinner. So the whole concept behind SeaPort is cutting the travel time in half so you can do a day's business in a day and have same day business trips again, not need to do an overnight at the same time.
We have people that have gone already from Boeing Field in Seattle to Spokane to drive up to the mountain to ski. We've had people flying to Seattle for hockey games and baseball, most recently, with opening day. We've had people going back and forth for vacations and going traveling to their second homes.
We actually found out that there's 7,000 second homeowners in eastern Washington and northern Idaho with Puget Sound addresses. There's a lot of people moving back and forth for all sorts of reasons. We actually have a customer who flies between Seattle and Portland with us that is 14 years old and she's going back and forth between her mom's house and her dad's house. That was never in our original business plan.
The point is, is that you never quite know who's going to get on the airplane. But that's the beauty of it, that anybody can get on the airplane. It's just an airline like any other just by a seat. And so anybody for any reason can travel between Boeing Field and Felts Field in Spokane. We're we're here for everybody, whether you're jumping on the airplane for business or whether you're going to a game or you're going to visit.
DN: It's a very romantic notion to jump on the airplane. You don't have to wait for your baggage and all that sort of stuff. But is there enough business? Is it romantic enough that you're going to be able to continue to make a living at it five years down the road?
KC: Well, that's up to the people of Spokane and Seattle, I guess, to determine. We think so because travel is so broken now.
I started in this business in 2008. It was easier to get between Spokane and Seattle 20 years ago than it is today. I would argue that it was even easier potentially to get between Seattle and Spokane 50 years ago than it is today. The reality is that air traffic has become so clogged by having to go through this one size fits all mega airport at SeaTac.
All we're doing is taking alternative airfields, Felts Field, Boeing Field. We're right sizing the infrastructure with the distance that you're traveling. We're using smaller aircraft that fall outside of TSA so you don't have any of that friction. We have on-site parking so you can park right in front of the terminal for free, walk in 20 minutes before your flight and go. And we provide enough flight frequency that it's a virtual conveyor belt in the sky so you can get over and back.
The thing that gives me the greatest encouragement, to answer your question, is that I see it on the faces of our customers every day. Once they do it, they come back. And so our challenge is not the product. The product sells itself. It's just an awareness challenge.
DN: Are there other markets that you think make sense? Boise, Tri-Cities, Moses Lake, Bellingham?
KC: We have ideas on additional markets. At the same time, our eponymous route, Seattle-Portland, we're still building that. We've put a lot of investment into Spokane. You're going to see a lot more marketing and advertising here in Spokane. We've got a new campaign just launching this week. We want to build those routes. So we take a long view of this.
We've been in business for 29 years. SeaPort is an extension of Alaska Seaplanes, which is a long-time regional airline based in Juneau, Alaska. We take the view that it takes three years to develop a route. So you've really got to put some time into it. It doesn't happen overnight. You've got to build it.
Awareness takes a while to develop. And then even after people become aware of it, they need to have a reason to use it. And then finally, you've got to break people of their habits. A lot of people are in the habit of just jumping in their car to Seattle. And you've got to say, hey, why don't you try flying? And they might say, well, I've done the flight. And once you go through SeaTac, it's such a pain in the butt, I'd just rather drive. And like, hey, no, no, no, no, we fly to Boeing Field in Seattle. So you've got to go through that whole conversation, too.
So for now, we're sticking to our knitting. We're focused on Spokane. We're focused on Portland. At the same time, you know, we're always keeping our eyes open for future growth and we do have some ideas on where that could be.
DN: I’m curious as to how the TSA situation has affected your business since you don't have TSA agents.
KC: It’s certainly brought a stark contrast between SeaPort, which operates outside the TSA and the major airlines, which operate, of course, inside of SeaTac and inside of TSA. TSA is a huge friction point for the major airlines and the major airports. It's not as bad in places like Spokane, of course, where you can zip through security relatively quickly.
SeaTac is a huge airport that's way oversubscribed. It's well beyond its design capacity. They added a third runway. They should have added a fourth. They added five gates. They really needed 50 more. They need not only one, but probably two additional freeways to connect to it. They need four times the parking garages they've got. They need more roadway access. They need more, more, more. They just need more.
The problem with airports like SeaTac, though, is that that's their only strategy. More, bigger, more, bigger, more, bigger. And that strategy really leaves short distance air travel routes like Seattle to Spokane in the dust. Those one-size-fits-all infrastructure strategies, they make a lot of sense if you're traveling across country or if you're traveling across the globe. But it doesn't make much sense if you're going only a couple hundred miles.
I travel on Alaska Airlines all the time myself, up to Alaska where our other businesses are, and so I certainly don't wish any ill on anybody going through the major airports. But the TSA problems right now and them being in the news, it's certainly brought a little bit of publicity to SeaPort for sure.
