The Presque Isle City Council on Wednesday night voted 5-2 to recommend JetBlue to continue serving the city’s airport for the next four years.
The council made its recommendation after a more than three-hour-long, at times contentious joint meeting with its airport advisory board, where representatives from JetBlue and American Airlines — the other bidder to provide service — fielded questions from city officials.
The recommendation goes to the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has the final say in what airline serves the airport through the federal Essential Air Service program. It may be several months before the DOT issues its order selecting the carrier.
EAS heavily subsidizes flights to more than 180 rural communities nationwide to make the trips profitable for airlines. If chosen by the U.S. DOT, JetBlue will receive $11.5 million annually over the four-year term beginning in September, the highest EAS subsidy in the nation.
JetBlue plans to continue the flight schedule it maintained in its current contract, according to its proposal.
The airline has served as Presque Isle’s air carrier since 2024, offering seven weekly roundtrip flights to Boston on 140-seat Airbus A220s that depart early in the morning and return late at night.
Under a four-year contract, JetBlue would consider offering nonstop flights from Presque Isle to Orlando, Florida, on Saturdays during peak periods, such as harvest break, the company’s senior vice president of government affairs wrote in the proposal.
“We put forward a four-year bid knowing that the DOT holds carriers into those bids. So that means we are fully willing to commit to the four years,” Reese Davidson, JetBlue’s director of international and regulatory counsel said Wednesday. “It’s been a really good market for us. We’re very pleased with it.”
The council chose the Long Island-based airline over a proposal from American Airlines, which bid to provide 12 roundtrip weekly flights on a 65-seat jet to Boston and Philadelphia at a cost of $8.2 million annually over a two-year contract.
American’s proposal focused on connectivity, emphasizing that it would offer a higher number of flights a week with more convenient flight times and offer broader connections from its hub in Philadelphia, where it connects to 116 cities.
“American is in a unique position in Boston where, while it’s not a hub for us, it’s still a focus city, we’re still very large and we still have decent connectivity,” Jordan Pack, the airline’s director of domestic network planning said. “But we can also plug in Philadelphia to enable even more connectivity than what’s enabled today.”
Pack appeared virtually to present American’s proposal. JetBlue sent two representatives in person. When airport director Scott Wardwell announced the former would be presenting over Zoom, an audible groan rose from the crowd that packed Presque Isle’s council chambers.
The public vastly favored staying with JetBlue, most of whom referenced the airline’s partnership with nonprofit Angel Flight New England, which organizes free flights for patients who need to travel for medical care.
The airline has provided more than 1,200 free flights to Angel Flight patients out of Presque Isle since 2024, JetBlue and a city councilor said.
“This is beyond politics and money and destinations.” Caribou resident Buirrea Van Burkleo said, referencing several life-threatening diagnoses she had received. “They’re saving my life, among countless others that I have met.”
There was minor pushback from business leaders, who favored the American Airlines proposal because it offered 12 flights and more connections. That thought was shared by councilors Mike Chasse and Hank King, who spoke in favor of and voted for the larger airline while acknowledging that the JetBlue service had been successful.
Wednesday’s meeting was the cumulative step in a revamped, eight-day recommendation process the city rolled out earlier this month.
The DOT release of the air carrier proposals on March 19 kicked off that timeline. The airport advisory board held a procedural meeting to discuss the process on Monday, prior to the joint session. Airport director Scott Wardwell and City Manager Sonja Eyler will formally send a letter of recommendation to the Department of Transportation by March 27.
The recommendation serves as the official position of the city and carries weight in the DOT’s decision making process. The department also considers the reliability of the airline, marketing and code-sharing agreements with other air carriers, and the cost of subsidizing the service.
It’s unclear when the DOT will make its final decision. In 2024, the department selected JetBlue in June, three months after the council recommended the airline. In 2022, it selected United Airlines less than a month after the council recommended the air carrier for a third consecutive contract to serve Presque Isle.
The city restructured its process in the wake of a contentious series of meetings in 2024 and criticism of a procedure Wardwell took to the council last summer that attempted to move decision-making behind closed doors.
Wardwell proposed that the council shift its deliberations over what airline to recommend into executive session. He called for the council to take a straw vote in that closed-door meeting, returning to public session to vote unanimously in favor of the airline that won the straw vote.
The change was designed to project unity and not deter airlines from bidding by speaking negatively about them in a public forum, Wardwell said.
But First Amendment experts told the Bangor Daily News that the policy was illegal.
Two weeks after voting to approve it, council reversed its decision, at the urging of the city attorney, and one councilor apologized for voting in favor of it, as a result of that reporting.
