Air service to Presque Isle International Airport — Maine’s only airport north of Bangor with commercial flights — has dramatically changed since the start of the 21st century.
Five airlines have served the airport in that time, with planes as small as the 19-passenger Beechcraft 1900D to the hulking 140-seat Airbus A220 used by the airport’s current carrier, JetBlue.
Now, the airport sits at another potential pivot point.
It offers commercial flights through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Essential Air Service program, which maintains air service to certain rural communities by subsidizing the cost of flights to make them profitable for airlines.
Contracts for Presque Isle have typically run for two-year terms. JetBlue’s contract, which began in 2024, expires in September.
Next week, the Presque Isle City Council is expected to recommend to the DOT the airline it believes should serve the city for the next two years.
JetBlue has submitted a bid to retain its contract. American Airlines is vying to replace it.
The DOT has the final say, but the council’s recommendation carries influence generally echoed in the federal order selecting the air carrier.
So ahead of the deliberation, the Bangor Daily News took a look back at how things have evolved since 2000 — the farthest back digital records of Essential Air Service contracts go — and how the federal program has sustained service to northern Maine.
The airlines
The regional airline CommutAir served Presque Isle at the turn of the century, but terminated its contract early in 2001, leading to a request for proposals that saw Colgan Air come out on top.
Colgan operated 19 flights a week from Presque Isle to Boston for the next 11 years, until the company went bankrupt and ceased operations in 2012. PenAir took over the EAS contract for the next six years, maintaining the same level of service until it too went bankrupt in 2017 and ended its contract early the next summer.
The DOT selected United Airlines as Presque Isle’s air carrier in 2018, shifting flights from Boston to Newark, and briefly to Washington Dulles during the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest airline to serve PQI this century, United used 50-seat regional jets, but reduced the number of flights per week from 19 to 12. The company lost a bid to retain its EAS contract to JetBlue in 2024, and is no longer part of the federal program.
JetBlue, in returning service to Boston, dropped that figure to just seven flights per week but upgraded to 100, then 140-seat planes. The change increased total weekly passenger capacity by almost 40%, despite the number of roundtrip flights being more than halved since 2000.
Click on the cards below to see more detailed information about each airline’s time as the commercial air carrier for Presque Isle International.
Rising costs
As Presque Isle’s air carriers have grown in size, so has the subsidy the federal government has paid those airlines.
When the DOT selected Colgan Air in 2001, its annual subsidy totaled just over $1 million. Flash forward two and a half decades, JetBlue is set to receive more than $11.2 million in subsidies for the second year of its contract ending in 2026.
It’s the highest annual EAS subsidy in the country, among a pool of 182 commercial airports supported by the program nationwide. That is, in part, because Presque Isle is an isolated market, which airlines perceive as having less risk, Jack Penning, the city’s airline consultant, said in 2024.
The next closest airport is Ogdensburg International Airport, along the Canadian border in northern New York. Breeze Airways is set to receive more than $8.8 million in federal funds to support seven weekly roundtrip flights to Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina on Airbus A220s.
Airlines serving the three other EAS communities in Maine — Augusta, Bar Harbor and Rockland — will each receive between $3.5 and $4.4 million in subsidies this year.
The charts below shows how subsidies have increased since 2001 at Presque Isle International and the 10 EAS airports benefitting from the largest federal subsidies.
