Alert! To all voting Minnesotans, call your representatives to protect the funding for our rural airports. Found out from Representative Nolan’s office that sometime in May or June the House will be voting on the Regional Essential Air Services Bill for Rural Commercial Airlines money. This money comes from taxes on domestic/foreign tickets sold to traveling passengers and some in the House of Representatives consider this as a waste of support to our regional air carriers. Well, Nolan and I do not consider the as a waste of money. Keeping our small community airports open is a necessity as far we are concerned.
Being old, we don’t drive four hours to the Twin Cities to hop a plane. We use our local airport and hop a plane to get to the cities, then hop another plane to get around the USA. My 75-year-old husband’s 94-year-old mother in South Dakota, from her health decline to death, spent months traveling back and forth. We used the Brainard airport which is only a few miles from where we live.
No way, as old people, we could have done that without our local air carriers. Just the thought of a four-hour round trip every week for months to Minneapolis, navigating lane changes and heavy traffic in the cities, would have scared me to death, afraid of getting or killing somebody.
I am terrified that our local airport will be shut down. Then what are we supposed to do!
Ginger Pendo
Aitkin
http://www.brainerddispatch.com/opinion/reader-opinion/3744431-reader-opinion-fund-local-airports