Gulf Shores and its sugar-white sand beaches are Alabama’s hottest tourist attraction, winning more and more visitors every year since the 2010 BP oil spill.
With that surge has come a clamor for new amenities. Opening in the next year or two will be a new zoo, a hotel and conference center across from the popular public beach, and a new 24-hour freestanding emergency room.
Bigger still, the Gulf Shores’ airport is poised to spread its wings wide. Plans are in the works to begin welcoming commercial flights into and out of Jack Edwards National Airport within the next two years.
“I’ve been in this industry for 40 years, and I can tell you that this thing will be huge. My expectation is that this thing will be a huge success.” said Scott Fuller, airport manager since 2013, whose focus is on transforming the 78-year-old general aviation complex into a commercial beehive.
He added, “Our visitors are getting closer to year-round now. It’s all just coming together.”
‘Great potential’
Jack Edwards, owned by the city since 1983, is overseen by an Airport Authority that guides its daily affairs and is charting the future course for its sprawling 838 acres.
Challenges abound as the commercial hopes take shape, from financing a new $8 million to $10 million airport terminal to securing a commitment from a low-cost carrier. The latter is viewed as a necessity.
“We have the capability to finance it ourselves,” said Fuller, suggesting bonding is the likely path. “We need a letter of intent from an airline.”
Another challenge will be spreading the word far and wide that Gulf Shores is a true air destination.
Close to 6.6 million people visited the beaches in 2018, up from around 6 million five years ago. And almost all of them drove there: A whopping 92% of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach visitors during the summers of 2018 and 2019 arrived by car.
A meager 7% came by air, according to Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism, and three-quarters of them traveled through the Pensacola International Airport, presumably renting a car for the hour-long drive to the west.
“We recognize that historically we’ve been predominately a drive-to market somewhere in the 95% drive to 5% fly range,” said Herb Malone, president & CEO of Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism. “We always see opportunities out there to expand more into the fly markets.” He said, “If we can pull it off to have some air service here, it would be a great potential.”
The public beach in Gulf Shores on a Memorial Day weekend. Most beach goers travel to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach by automobile. In fact, recent statistics show a whopping 92% traveled to coastal Alabama last year by car or truck. But movement is afoot to transform Jack Edwards National Airport in Gulf Shores into a commercial airport that could boost the number of people who arrive to coastal Alabama by plane. (file photo)
Fuller believes that Gulf Shores is primed to lure air travelers from major cities like Nashville who’d much prefer a direct flight into the beach resort as opposed to a long drive down Interstate 65.
Nashville, he pointed out, is a big drive market for Gulf Shores, and it’s at least eight hours away. “If we had air service, we could cut into that tremendously,” Fuller said.
The airport has a 7,000-foot-long runway that is equipped to handle large 737 aircraft, Fuller said.
“We have (large) charters coming in, Hangout Festivals and sporting events where universities fly in,” he said. The airport was designed, nearly 20 years ago, in preparation of handling larger commercial aircraft, Fuller said.
‘Like an air show everyday’
The first step in the transformation of Jack Edwards airport – named for the popular congressman who died in September at age 91 – involves the construction of a control tower.
The airport was among the first in the U.S. to apply for and receive a control tower grant since a federal program was reauthorized to help finance such construction following a 10-year hiatus.
The tower’s total cost will be $4.6 million, Fuller said, of which the Airport Authority is responsible for $500,000. He said the authority will be ready in May to bid out a construction contract, with an anticipated finish-date of February or March 2021.
A tower, Fuller said, will allow the authority to better orchestrate the activity that occurs daily on the airport’s runways.
Gulf Shores airport had 93,000 takeoffs and landings in 2019, according to Fuller, which he says makes it the “second busiest” airport in Alabama behind Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International.
According to Federal Aviation Administration statistics, Birmingham-Shuttlesworth had 104,847 takeoffs and landings in 2019. Those figures represented all types of aircraft: commercial, general aviation, military, etc. The second closest large airport was Montgomery Regional Airport with 81,637 takeoffs and landings.
Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman with the FAA, said that Jack Edwards National Airport wasn’t included in the federal data because it didn’t have a control tower.
But Fuller said, “It’s like an air show every day out here.”
The buzzing activity of private and military aircraft is what prompted the Airport Authority to pursue the federal grant for tower construction. “We knew we would get it,” said Fuller, referring to the grant. “There is no other airport in the country with a bigger demand for it.”
He added, “We have aircraft (taking off) 15 seconds of each other at both ends of the runway. It should be 60 seconds.”
The new tower, she said, “will control the air space four miles from the airport and make it a lot safer and more comfortable for people coming in here.”
‘We have no history’
The next step will be securing a commitment for a commercial airline to fly in and out of Jack Edwards, and Fuller is scouring the market for possibilities.
Simply finding airlines that have even heard of Gulf Shores has been complicated, Fuller admits. He said he’s met with eight or nine airlines in the past two years.
“We have no history,” he said. “We have no air history, commercial wise. If you want to go to Mobile or Pensacola, they have a history.”
Fuller insists that Jack Edwards, as a repositioned commercial airport, won’t be competing with the Mobile Airport Authority and its future goals of relocating the city’s commercial aviation services to the Downtown Mobile Airport at the Brookley Aeroplex. The drive-time between the two airports is slightly more than an hour.
“Mobile’s market is more business orientated than we are,” said Fuller. “Very little (commercial activity) would be business here. The mainstream airlines don’t like tourism, they like business.”
Chris Curry, president of the Mobile Airport Authority, said the two airports won’t be in competition even if they are both attempting to lure low-cost carriers. Frontier Airlines, the only airline flying out of Brookley – which opened as a commercial airport last year – will be leaving the market in April.
Curry is planning for the exodus and anticipates a larger “legacy” airline relocating from Mobile Regional Airport in far western Mobile to the Downtown Airport. And a master plan, outlining how to relocate the entire commercial operations to the Downtown airport, is expected to be finalized by July.
“Hopefully, (Gulf Shores) is successful, but I think it’s going to be tough,” said Curry. “The way the industry is going right now, even the low-cost carrier model is gravitating toward major cities.”
Ideally, said Fuller, the Jack Edwards transformation would follow a similar script to the Punta Gorda Airport in southeast Florida. Jack Edwards and Punta Gorda both opened around the same time – in the 1940s – and both as general aviation airports.
Punta Gorda welcomed its first low-cost carrier in 2008, and Allegiant Airlines soon followed. The result has been an explosion of airport activity that has seen Punta Gorda’s passenger traffic go from 182,423 in 2010, to 1.6 million last year.
“Similar town, similar tourism,” Fuller said, with hopeful eyes on Allegiant someday. “Allegiant is huge. The Midwest is our market. Washington and Baltimore … The people we speak with at the Pentagon are wondering when we will get air service. A lot of federal retirees are here and are going back and forth and are still working. There is a lot of military here.”
Fuller said the Airport Authority is also prepared to dole out incentives to lure the airlines. For example, it could award a six-month abatement on landing and ramp fee charges.
Such incentives aren’t uncommon. In Baton Rouge, officials are talking about the development of public-private partnerships to raise revenue guarantees for airlines that agree to bring in new service. Ohio state economic development officials are setting aside $4 million to help airports attract flights “to unserved or underserved markets,” according to media reports.
“What we are hearing is, ‘When will you get air service?’” said Fuller. “Here, they understand the importance of the airport to the economy. Without this airport, there is no economy. There is nothing.”
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Come fly to me: Gulf Shores looks to expand airport, drive tourism - AL.com
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