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, ^ , June 22, 2010 - • 

Office of the Secretary 

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Gary J. Thompson 

Worland Municipal Airport 

Airport Manager 

1438 Airport Rd. 

Worland, WY 82401 

Dear Mr. Thompson, 

I would like to update you on the essential air service (EAS) situation at Laramie 

Regional Airport and Worland Municipal Airport and give you an opportunity to offer 

any comments on the record before we submit a recommendation to the Assistant 

Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs. As you know. Great Lakes Aviation 

Ltd., operating as both a United Airlines and Frontier Airlines code shcire partner 

(Great Lakes), is the current EAS provider at your community, and their contract expires 

September 30, 2010. In anticipation of that, we issued Order 2010-5-14, May 12, 2010, 

soliciting proposals from carriers interested in providing subsidized EAS for a new, twoyear period, beginning October 1, 2010. In response to our request, two carriers 

responded: Great Lakes and Sovereign Air, Inc. (Sovereign Air). 

You should have received a copy of the proposals from each carrier, and they can be 

accessed at www .regulations. gov by entering the numbers DOT-OST-1997-2958 for 

Laramie and DOT-OST-1997-2981 for Worland in the search block. As a result, we will 

only briefly summarize them here. 

Great Lakes has proposed one service option for each community to be considered as 

stand-alone bids, both using 19-seat Beechcraft 1900 aircraft. The service to Laramie 

would be three nonstop round trips each weekday and four round trips each weekend (19 

a week) to Denver for an annual subsidy of $1,181,572. The service to Worland would 

be two round trips each weekday and weekend (12 a week) over a Woriand-CheyenneDenver, Worland-Laramie-Denver, or Worland-Denver routing for $1,770,336. 

At Worland, Sovereign Air would provide three round trips Monday-Friday, and four 

weekend round trips (19 a week) over a Worland-Laramie-Denver routing for an armual 

subsidy of $2,151,671. At Laramie, Sovereign Air would provide the 19 round trips a 

week described above, plus 16 additional nonstop round trips a week for a total of 5 daily 

nonstop round trips (35 a week) for an annual subsidy of $2,361,671. Under its Option 1, 

all service would be with 9-seat King Air aircraft. Under its Option 2, Sovereign would 

use a 19-seat Beechcraft 1900 on the Laramie flights that do not service Worland and a 9-

seat King Air aircraft on all other flights. We note that the 9-seat King Air aircraft does 
not meet the 15-or-more-passengcr-seat standard required by our governing statues (49 

U.S.C. § 41732(b)(3) and (b)(6)). If the communities indicate their willingness to waive 

their right to receive EAS with 15-seat or larger aircraft, we will consider the waiver to 

apply only to the new two-year term under consideration at this time (i.e., we would not 

assume that the communities waive their rights in perpetuity.) Further, Sovereign Air 

does not currently have the requisite operating authority from either the Department or 

the Federal Aviation Administration to provide scheduled air service, although it has 

submitted applications. 

The schedules that the carriers have proposed are illustrative only and they may make 

schedule changes to reflect changing conditions, e.g., to better meet shifting connecting 

bank times at the hub. However, the Department does expect a subsidized air carrier to 

maintain well-timed and well-spaced flights in order to ensure full compensation. 

We request that you review the proposals and submit any comments you may have as 

soon as possible, but no later than July 21. We will carefully consider your comments 

before we submit a recommendation to the Assistant Secretary for a decision. 

Please send your comments via e-mail to EAS@dot.gov or by fax to 202-366-7638. If 

you have any questions, please feel free to contact Michael Martin of my staff at 

michael.f.martin@dot.gov or 202-366-6494. 

Sincerely, 

Dennis J. DeVany, Chief 

Essential Air Service Division 

Office of Aviation Analysis 

cc: Michael Matthews, Great Lakes Aviation, Ltd. 

Jon Payne, Sovereign Air, Inc.