theSheetNews.com

At approximately 4:20 p.m. on Friday, April 27 at the Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH), a twin engine Cessna general aviation (GA) aircraft landed “gear-up” on the runway without causing major damage or personal injury. Airport personnel responded, as did the Long Valley and Mammoth Lakes fire protection districts, in addition to the Mammoth Lakes Police Department.

The aircraft was towed from the runway, allowing Alaska Airlines Flight No. 2196 from Los Angeles to land at approximately 4:53 p.m.

The Mammoth Yosemite Airport has resumed full operations. -Press Release

Here in Mammoth, we have a penchant for stumbling upon a good thing … and then taxing the hell out of it until it goes away.

Let’s hope we’re not marching down the same path when it comes to commercial air service.

The Sheet obtained emails this week regarding a dialogue between the Town of Mammoth Lakes and Alaska Airlines. The subject: airport landing fees.

The Town currently charges the commercial airlines $220 per landing. It wishes to bump that rate to $240 this winter, a 9% increase.

In justification of the increase, Assistant Airport Manager Brian Picken argued in an email to Alaska Airlines that, “The Airport has expended $3 million in capital improvements to make commercial air service possible. (GSE [ground support equipment], Terminal, Terminal Annex, Security Upgrades). 62% of the Airports operating expenses are attributable to commercial air service. Only 18% of revenue (with the proposed fee increase of $240) is attributable to commercial air service. While we understand that commercial air service needs to be subsidized at our current level of service, the Airport’s request for a fee increase seems reasonable. In comparison with other airports our size, revenue of $5.14 per passenger seems appropriate.”

The reply from Kiran Limaye, Alaska Airlines’ Airport Affairs Manager, was not so sanguine.

“Unfortunately there is still a lot of concern over the proposed 9% increase.  Our load factors have not been high enough to get the $5.14 cost per enplanement you are showing.

As you have more flight volume I don’t understand why you would also need to raise the rate – the unit cost should be going down or staying flat. Horizon operates three flights per day and we did not request the terminal annex nor were we consulted on it since we last spoke about it in February 2010. At that time, I stated that we were comfortable with the existing space.

Increased costs could put future service in jeopardy and request that the town hold rates steady or consider a more reasonable 3% increase.”

A cursory check online showed that most, if not all, resort airports charge landing fees based on weight. What follows is a small sampling:

Steamboat $4.28/1,000 lbs.

Aspen $4.12/1,000 lbs.

Telluride $3.70/1,000 lbs.

Jackson Hole $2.39/1,000 lbs.

The CRJ-700 aircraft, which United uses to fly into Mammoth, has a maximum landing weight of 67,000 pounds. A full plane at Mammoth’s current $220/landing fee, by my calculations, would amount to $3.28 per 1,000 lbs – on the low end of the above range.

The issue is load factor, as Alaska’s representative mentions above. If you’re filling 60% of the plane, that means you’ve got about 30 empty seats and 6,000 less pounds on board – but in a flat fee arrangement, you’re still paying the same. Which makes $3.28/1,000 lbs. become $3.67/1,000 lbs. If Mammoth increases the fee to $240 per planeload at a 60% load factor, then you’re at $4/1,000 lbs.

… And obviously more expensive on a per passenger basis at lesser load factors. This may not matter during seasonal periods where planes are full, but it may have a small impact on Alaska’s decision to operate at other times of the year.

Airport Commissioners were never consulted about the proposed landing fee increase.

At the special Airport Commission meeting Wednesday, Town Manager Dave Wilbrecht told Commissioners that “Your commission needs more support” and that “all commissions need to be treated the same.”

Damn, Airport Manager Bill Manning must’ve thought to himself. You mean, I actually have to take meeting minutes for real? 

Commissioner Deb Pierrel suggested that “Any information we [as commissioners] request should be followed through on.”

This apparently doesn’t happen now.

“So much of what we get is after-the-fact,” added Commission Chair Pam Murphy.

The minutes, noted Pierrel, “should be inclusive and fact-based.”

Ouch.

Commissioner Lee Hughes diplomatically said he was cognizant of not trying to overload Airport Manager Bill Manning and Assistant Manager Brian Picken with too many requests – I suppose transcribing minutes of monthly meetings being one of them.

The ultimate question is whether or not Manning can adapt to an environment where he’s expected to be responsive to anyone other than himself.

The Sheet asked Wilbrecht if he had the guts to replace his airport staff in the event things do not improve.

“You know my record,” he replied sharply.

Which, for the record, is not an answer to the question.

Note: Picken sent the following email Thursday further explaining the Town’s position.

Hi Ted,

Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH)currently charges $220 per flight, as you noted. Airports use a variety of revenue generating methods for airline charges including, gross landing weight, fee per landing, terminal rent, counter rent, utility costs, or any combination thereof. In 2008 Horizon Air requested a per flight fee be used at MMH which is consistent with their other small airports.

Benchmark studies have been done which total the fees and rents airlines pay to airports and put it into a revenue per enplanement value. For this purpose we have used the attached study by Mead and Hunt for Hailey Airport. The benchmark survey included the following airports, Hailey, Friedman Memorial Airport, Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, Durango-La Plata County Airport, Gallatin Airport Authority, Glacier Park International Airport, and Jackson Hole Airport.

This 2004 study determined that the benchmark per enplaned passenger was between $4.57 and $4.69. Adjusted for inflation and put into 2011 dollars the benchmark would be between $5.48 and $5.52.  This year we are proposing a fee per flight increase from $220 to $240, which is an increase of 9%. MMH is projecting 35,000 enplanements this year and with a landing fee of $240 this would equate to a per enplanement fee of $5.14.  This remains well below the Mead and Hunt benchmark adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars.

It should be noted that the current direct cost of commercial air service is $607K.  With no fee increase airport revenue from commercial air service would be $165K.  With the increase to $240 per flight MMH would receive an additional $15K annually.

Finally, our airline contracts are renegotiated annually and the proposed fee increase is still in the negotiation stage.

I have attached the Mead and Hunt Study for your review.

Thanks
Brian.  

Click here to download the Mead and Hunt Study.

Local snowboarder Patrick Redding testing the bag on Tuesday. (Photo: Horowitz)

They say it’s never a good idea to go into business with your friends, but maybe when it comes to snowboarders, that rule just doesn’t apply.

“Our goal is to create the most realistic environment to learn on, and essentially to fall on,” said Katal Innovations co-owner Stephen Slen. The 25-year old Engineer, along with colleague Aaron Coret, 26, co-invented well…humongous bags of air, along with the managing help of friend and lead operator, Ryan Regehr, 24.

If you’ve been on the mountain recently you may have noticed the colossal white air bag drooped over a huge jump adjacent to Chair 3. Referred to as the Katal Landing Pad, the concept is simple, go off a jump with no regard for your health and plop down on a giant cushy landing pad. The thing that sets it apart from a mere foam pit, flat airbag or a pile of leaves, is that you can actually ride away from it if you happen to land on your feet.

The idea seems easy enough, but the concept for the landing pad was something that was born as a college engineering project at the University of British Columbia. “We always had the idea in the back of our heads,” said Slen, “but it wasn’t until Aaron’s accident that we really decided to go for it,” he adds, referring to a snowboarding accident that left (now co-owner) Aaron Coret with a severe spinal injury, paralyzing him from the neck down.

“He was one of those guys that always ripped on a snowboard, it was one of those freak things that just happened.”

After the accident, Coret was in rehab and Slen proposed the concept to his professors as a design project. With a $500 grant from the school combined with his life savings and some help from their respective families, they put together a prototype pad in a sail shop located in Vancouver. After about a month, they had a workable prototype and held their first test session on Blackcomb glacier in Whistler, BC. The following season they built a scaled-up prototype (50 ft. wide and 90 ft. long) and hosted Katal’s first public event at Lake Louise Ski area in the Albertan Rockies.

In November 2009, they got a phone call. A production company in Vancouver calls up Coret and said they’ve heard of this landing pad and asked for a meeting. Not knowing what the meeting was even about, Regher takes it. After filling out about 25 minutes of confidential paperwork, a guy in a suit shows Regeher a picture of a snowboarder jumping through the Olympic rings. “Right then, I knew what they were looking for, and the company wasn’t even really going. None of us were even full-time.” In fact, Slen at the time, was doing side work as a Field Engineer on the Sea-to-Sky highway for the 2010 Olympics, “That meeting was the catalyst that really jump-started the company,” claims Slen.

Essentially the Olympic executives wanted a pad that could support a snowboarder doing a 35 ft. drop and clearing a 30 ft. gap. “We dropped everything and moved into a hotel across the street from Olympic stadium,” Slen said. “We spent the next 21 days finishing up the landing pad and preparing for the opening ceremonies.”

Originally there were three snowboarders chosen to do the stunt, Shin Campos, Johnny Lyall and Kevin Sansalone (all acting as understudies for each other in case of an injury). When Sansalone caught an edge during the  first practice sessions and broke his collar bone (not because of the pad but due to the artificial snow called Snowflex), it came down to a coin flip between Lyall and Campos. “We were standing right there,” claims Regehr, “the coin actually landed on the ground and rolled around on the floor, like in a movie or something.” The young up-and-comer Johnny Lyall won the toss along with the opportunity to participate in the only element of the opening ceremonies that involved a real physical risk.

“It was so intense,” admits Slen, “We were standing right next to the pad wearing our issued white puffys and white pants watching the whole thing go down and just sweating our a**es off. As soon as Lyall landed the jump we had 5 minutes to take it down before the athletes were going to enter the stadium,”

On top of the exposure of the opening ceremonies, the partners meanwhile had secured a landing pad to be set up at Vail, Colo. While Regehr and Slen were going back and forth from Vancouver, their buddy Gideon Bladgride manned the pad in Vail and some of the world’s top riders got  a chance to see it up close, including Mammoth team skier Kristi Leskinen. With the help of Noah Brooks, the Director of the Freeride Team and Ski and Snowboard Clubs of Vail, the landing pad got a chance to spend an entire season in Colorado.

“I get a phone call one day from Travis Rice,” claims Slen  “that was like…Hey Steve it’s Trav. Just wanted to rap out about setting up a date with you, me and your blow-up toy.” Rice got his date, and since then Quiksilver jumped on board to help the guys tour the landing pad.

After that, the company has had a couple of stops and now the guys and their giant “blow-up toy” are here in Mammoth due in part to Leskinen’s relentless hounding of Mammoth‘s Director of Youth Action Sports, Oren Tanzer.

Currently Mammoth Mountain is only renting the pad, but since it’s inauguration they’ve already sold out all of the landing pad’s camps and sold a substantial amount of day tickets. Mammoth Mountain has always been a leader in terrain parks as well as park safety and quality standards so naturally the $95,000 Katal Landing Pad is a perfect fit for Mammoth’s Unbound terrain parks. And Tanzer doesn’t deny it, “We’re happy so far. The camps were hugely successful, the weather was tough but besides that we’ve been bringing in the numbers we’ve expected.”

Though the landing pad has a hefty price tag, MMSA is still taking a look at it’s feasibility for next year, “We want the thing to obviously pay for itself,” stated Tanzer, “and we understand the possible PR value. It’s just that the logistics are tough. The tricky thing is maintaining it. It takes about six people to operate and keep it up. So, as of now we’re undecided.”

It may be absurd to think that Katal Innovations is still up-and-coming. Then again, maybe it’s unwise to underestimate a group of engineering snowboarders. “We don’t even really have an office, we’re just nomads,” Regehr said. But with a secured manufacturer in Los Angeles and a few more stops for the season the company is off and rolling. “We’re just trying to slang a bunch of pads,” Slen admits and, so far it seems like they probably will.

For more info on Katal check out www.katalinnovations.com.  The Katal Landing Pad is open until May 31. For info on camps contact Ben Wisner at 760.934.2571 ext. 3144

Mammoth Mountain and Katal Innovations have teamed up to bring a Katal Landing Pad to Mammoth from May 22-31. The Katal Landing Pad will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily and will cost $40 per day for unlimited use.

Measuring at 50 feet wide by 90 feet long and 5 feet thick, the Katal Landing Pad covers the entire surface area of a jump after the takeoff allowing users to attempt new tricks without the consequences of crashing on an icy landing. Unlike traditional foam pits used for jumping, the Katal Landing Pad allows users to “ride-out” their landings to more closely simulate an actual jump landing.

The Katal Landing Pad will be installed on a custom jump featuring three takeoffs ranging from 10-60 feet. The setup will be accessible from Face Lift Express. Passes for use of the Katal Landing Pad are available at Main Lodge Ticket Windows.

Mammoth’s Snowboard and Freeride Ski Teams will be offering training camps that are open to the public. Enrollment includes individualized instruction, daily video review and unlimited use of the Katal Landing Pad.

Training Camp Dates:

· May 22-23 – Weekend Session – $250

· May 24-28 – Weekday Session – $625

· May 29-31 – Holiday Weekend Session – $375

Daily Camp Schedule:

· 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. air bag session

· 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on snow training

· 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. video review session

For more information or to enroll in one of the training camp sessions, please contact Ben Wisner at bwisner@mammoth-mtn.com or 760.934.2571 extension 3144.

Mammoth will be unveiling a new Spring Terrain Park in Saddle Bowl on May 22 to coincide with the opening of the Katal Landing Pad. In addition to the Katal Landing Pad jump, the Spring Park will include a 22-foot Super Duper Pipe, two jumps and six jibs. All features will be groomed and cut nightly and the park will remain open until the end of winter operations.

For more information about the Katal Landing Pad or to view photos and videos of the Pad in use, please visit http://katalinnovations.com/. -MMSA Press Release