The amount of flights cancelled due to low visibility has decreased for the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport. Around 18 percent of winter flights were canceled over the past four years, but that rate will soon drop down to two percent. 

Tony Bean, PMRA executive director, said more flights can land despite low visibility because of the new instrument landing system. Bean said this is because pilots do not have to physically see the taxiway, but can use the system to land the planes. 

There were only two cancellations in February, but December had a lot of visibility issues, he said. 

The airport will still have cancellations due to mechanical problems as well as flights canceled by the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Bean said. The Seattle weather system monitors weather patterns which are used to decide whether to cancel a flight.

When it snows heavily in Seattle, airport employees are unable to travel to work, which slows down the entire airport. 

“Those things happen in the winter just because of the nature of what happens with weather system-wide,” Bean said.

This winter the airport spent $5,000 on plowing and de-icing parking lots and taxiways. One flight was canceled due to recurring icing on the taxiway, which made it unsafe for planes to take off, he said. 

“On our side of it, we really have to close it until we can get the icing to quit,” he said. “There is nobody in our industry … that is going to put a passenger at risk.”

In December, one flight was diverted to land in Spokane, he said. Another flew into Spokane in order to fuel up so it could circle before landing, Bean said. 

Alaska Airlines also flew in two empty aircrafts from Boise to supplement the two pre-canceled flights from Seattle in January, he said.

Steve Vreeken, general manager of Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, said the hotel rarely receives passengers who have a cancelled flight. He said he sees about 5 to 10 people per year.

“Those people that are coming [into Pullman] are still going to come in,” Vreeken said. 

Some will fly in or out through Spokane and some will even book a later flight, he said. 

If there’s something going on in town, people will find a way to get here, he said. 

The airport is adding new flights and flight times to increase the reliability of planes coming in and flying out, Bean said. Starting March 23, there will be two morning flights, one at 5:30 a.m. and one at 7:30 a.m.

An additional flight from Sea-Tac will arrive at 10 p.m.  This means that two aircraft will be at the airport overnight, instead of just one, Bean said.

Vreeken said the additional flights will be more convenient flights and will bring in more business. 

“People will have more trust in [the] flights coming in,” he said. 

During the summer, the schedule will go back to four flights per day, Bean said. The airport will also begin construction of the new taxiway during this time. 

The east wing of the taxiway will be completed summer 2020 and the west wing will be completed summer 2021. 

With the completion of the new taxiways, the community will be able suggest which airlines should also be serviced by the airport. This will allow the airport to have better servicing, different routes and more destinations, he said. 

“We’ve never been in a position where we’ve been able to go make a pitch as a community because we were deficient in the infrastructure we had with the [previous] runway,” Bean said.

Bean said a representative from Transportation Security Administration will be having  interviews March 2-6 for people who wish to sign up for TSA PreCheck. More information can be found on the airport’s website.