Commercial Aviation Work Group

# Commercial Aviation Work Group — Meeting Transcript

**Location:** TransAlta Commons, Centralia College (host: Chehalis‑Centralia Airport)
**Session:** July 2026 (regular meeting + Chehalis‑Centralia Airport tour)

**Attribution note:** Speakers identified conservatively. The two lead consultants are labeled **Steve (consultant)** (forecasts, demand, economics) and **Peter Kirsch (consultant)** (legal/regulatory, strategy); **Mark Champany (CNS)** facilitates. A separate **Steven Pollinsky (Commerce)** appears briefly. Where a line was clearly one of the two consultants but not cleanly assignable, it is marked **Consultant**. Timestamps appear only at speaker changes.

Airport shorthand: **SEA** = Sea‑Tac; **PAE** = Paine Field; **BFI** = Boeing Field; **PDX** = Portland; **YVR** = Vancouver, BC. “CAWG” = this work group; “the CAC” = the earlier commission that handled site selection.

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## Opening and housekeeping

**0:00 — Staff (housekeeping):** Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the Commercial Aviation Work Group meeting. Work group members and members of the public, please be sure to sign in on the appropriate sign‑in sheets at the front of the room. There will be an opportunity for public comment from 12:45 to 1:15 p.m., and I will alternate between in‑person and online. Work group members, please speak clearly and loudly throughout the meeting so those in person and online can hear you. Hybrid meetings come with unique challenges, so I appreciate everyone’s cooperation and patience if any technical difficulties arise.

Members online, please keep your video on and your microphone on mute unless you’re speaking. If you have a comment or question during the meeting, please speak up or use the hand‑raise button. As a reminder, members of the public will be muted unless called on during public comment, at which point I’ll unmute you. For those in person, the emergency exits are located in three places along the glass windows, and restrooms are out the door to the right.

Audio is on? Okay. Now I’ll pass it on to Evan.

**1:12 — Evan Nordby (Chair):** Good morning, everybody. I’m Evan Nordby, the chair. Welcome, everyone, to Centralia College’s TransAlta Commons for our July meeting. I want to thank our Chehalis‑Centralia airport director, Brandon Rakes, for hosting us today and hosting our tour. I’d like to go around and take attendance as we usually do — everyone in the room first, and then I’ll call on folks on Zoom to identify themselves.

Starting on my right: Alan Adolf, regional transportation manager for the Yakima Valley Conference of Governments, the RTPO for the Yakima area, non‑voting member. Gary Wirt, citizen representative from Eastern Washington. And Rich Mueller, aviation director representing commercial airports and ports.

I’m not sure if your mic was on back there. Okay. And joining us online, we have Charlie [Riordan], representing businesses that depend on aviation. Alicia Crank, citizen rep, Western Washington. Geetanjali Reuben, citizen. Steven Pollinsky, representing the Washington State Department of Commerce. Ben Brookman with Alaska Airlines. Buck Taft, representing the public ports of Washington.

I think that’s everyone, although I can’t see you all. Not quite — Maria [Batayola]. Is there anyone else online who hasn’t introduced themselves? Environmental organizations. I think that’s everyone.

## Appointments and administrative updates

**3:30 — Nordby:** Turning to the status of appointments: no one new has been appointed since our April meeting. We have several statutory seats unfilled — voting seats for freight forwarding, trucking, a statewide environmental organization, and citizen reps from Eastern and Western Washington. We also have non‑voting seats open for a Western Washington Metropolitan Planning Organization and a Western Washington regional airport. I understand there are some pending appointments with the governor’s office, and if we hear anything, we’ll let the whole membership know. Anyone watching who’s interested in applying can go to the state’s website and apply.

**4:22 — Member:** Mr. Chair — I’m looking at an email from PSRC dated May 2025, from Kelly McGordy. She said at the time that she didn’t have time to participate, but that if we asked, she’d reach out to other MPOs around Western Washington. That was a year ago, and I don’t know that we’ve heard back. Maybe we should follow up with PSRC to see if they have ideas about MPO representatives from Western Washington.

**5:05 — Nordby:** Who’s in the best position to make that ask? Mark?

**5:13 — Mark Champany (CNS):** We can reach out. Yeah.

**5:28 — Nordby:** A handful of other updates. Members should have received an email about updating your bios. Those of us who’ve been on the work group since the beginning have bios and photos on the website that we supplied. They’re offering to take new photos — that really only applies to those of us here in person, but the offer probably stands until the next meeting. If you want a new photo for the website, and either in person, in writing here, or by replying through the form in the email link, there are some questions for doing a new bio. The planning team would like us to answer those and expand our bios a little on the website. There’s a deadline — I think a couple weeks from now.

**6:36 — Member:** A quick question on the reappointments. Is there a timeline? Do we just follow the same protocol as new applicants?

**6:54 — Nordby:** There are several members whose appointments have expired, and our direction from the governor’s office is just to continue working.

**7:08 — Nordby:** Meeting workbooks. We’ve been asked whether we’d like printed workbooks at future meetings to compile presentations, reference materials, and notes. There were binders from the very first meeting with information from the prior CAC. I still have mine on a shelf at home. We could take that material, plus the new material, and put it all in one place in print. By show of hands — clicking in Zoom, and here in the room — who’d be interested in that?

**7:57 — Member:** A question: is that material available online? It seems to me we had a shared folder set up by WSDOT for that purpose, if I recall. It might save a lot of paper if we took advantage of that. There’s a Google shared docs folder where we could put all that if that’s an option. Some of it is quite voluminous, and the material originally in our binder is very fine print — a little difficult to read. It’d be easier online. That’s just my personal thought.

**8:46 — Nordby:** What about folks online — whether printed into binders or in an online accessible archive you could refer to, would that be useful?

**9:09 — Member (online):** I’m fine with online, too.

**9:13 — Member:** I’m interested in a hard copy of the consultants’ report.

**9:22 — Nordby:** It sounds like a good idea. If we can put it into some sort of online repository and also make printed copies on request. On request. Okay.

**9:39 — Nordby:** The next suggestion, looking ahead to future operations of the group: it’s been suggested we consider having subcommittees by area of interest or focus. Right now I’d let that idea float, and maybe this afternoon in our discussion time we can talk about it more — just because springing it on everybody right now, as we’re doing introductory remarks, doesn’t seem right. The idea is that all members bring different areas of interest and expertise, and we’re appointed to represent different constituencies. So subcommittees could think more in depth about some of these issues and report back to the full group. There are pros and cons. I wanted to put that out there, and we can discuss it later today.

## Agenda overview

**11:14 — Nordby:** Agenda overview. We’re going to recap the April meeting. From 10:20 to 11:15 we’ll have a discussion on the capacity gap: the consultants will present on the various studies about the anticipated gap in mostly passenger capacity going forward, as well as information about plans in Vancouver and Portland, and then planned capacity enhancements we know of — and what’s left after the buildout that’s already planned. We have a break from 11:15 to 11:30. Then discussion.

For the last couple of meetings we’ve been hearing a lot from our consultant group, and they’ve now asked us, the members, to digest and start more of a discussion about what we’ve heard, and what we anticipate going into at least the annual report we’re starting to draft for the legislature this fall. So as we hear the presentation this morning, and during the break, start taking notes and thinking about questions, comments, and thoughts about everything you’ve heard over the last couple of meetings — about where we go from here.

We have lunch from 12:15 to 12:45, public comment from 12:45 to 1:15, and then continued discussion. We’ll set a new meeting date, and then we have our tour of the Chehalis‑Centralia Airport from 3:00 to 4:00. With that, I’ll hand it over to Mark.

## Consultant recap of the April meeting

**13:31 — Mark Champany (CNS):** Thank you, Chair Nordby. Mark Champany with CNS Companies, part of the facilitation team supporting the work group. I have a few slides, but as the chair alluded, I want this to be more of a generative conversation about some of the things we’ve heard, where we’re going, and what we want to do next.

For folks who haven’t participated, or members of the public who are new, a few reminders on the mission. The group is not searching for and building a new airport — that’s not the main mission. It’s different from the CAC; there are different members. Our goal is to evaluate the long‑range commercial aviation and transportation needs of the state, including alternatives for additional capacity — really looking at how we maximize the existing infrastructure and use it efficiently, but doing that in consideration of multimodal opportunities as well. Ultimately, we make a set of recommendations back to the legislature about things that should be enhanced or supported to help those initiatives. There’s a lot more detail on the aviation work group website.

Recapping April: you heard a lot from us on airport capacity. We gave an “airport capacity 101” — what that means, and a lot of the different aspects of airports. It’s not just runways and taxiways, not just terminals, not just the roadway system; it’s how those all interact and need to be balanced to process passengers and cargo. A lot of factors play into that, and it’s not easy by any means. We tried to give all of you the baseline of how that works, and some of the things we might do as we start to think of ideas to move the system forward.

We did some unconstrained forecasts — Steve presented those. Not the first time a forecast has been done: the state has its system plan with forecasts, the individual airports have their own, PSRC has done some. There’s a lot of alignment in all of that for the demand. The demand is going to continue to come to this region for many reasons — business, recreation. That alignment gives the consultant team, and you, an understanding of what that demand might look like going forward.

We also talked about the work group’s requirement to report to the legislature annually. That’s due at the end of the year, so we can’t wait until the end of the year to think about it. We started those conversations about what that might look like, and we need to continue them. That’s for later this afternoon.

To this point we’ve seen a lot of alignment on the demand profile. SEA is doing their SAMP, getting it through final environmental approvals with some capacity enhancements. Paine Field has its master plan and potential accommodation of additional passengers. We’ve been coordinating to understand those plans. There’s a lot of alignment, and improvements that will help capacity in the region — but there’s still not enough. When we look at that demand profile, there’s still not enough to accommodate everything coming in the next 20 to 30 years.

Are there potential intermodal opportunities that might help? There’s the new‑airport discussion — but those take a long time to build and are much farther out. So, staying focused on the mission: what are we doing in that next window — what we’re calling the capacity gap — the time frame when SEA and Paine Field improvements are no longer enough, and the time when something bigger, beyond probably all of our lives, is needed? That’s what we want the group to focus on: additional things the work group wants the consultant team to look into, or things we should note as important to help move existing improvements along faster so we can get them online sooner. Some of that needs funding, and other discussions. I think Steve has some additional comments on this.

**19:12 — Steve (consultant):** Sometimes in this region the discussion of a new airport sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the room. What’s interesting is that if you planned a new airport today, you wouldn’t have it for 20 to 30 years. So the question becomes: if we have capacity constraints beginning in the low‑to‑mid 2030s, what do you do about it?

In a way, it’s important to think first about how you manage the capacity at the airports you have now — how you optimize capacity at your existing facilities, for commercial service, for critical air cargo, and for general aviation. If you align those three sections of demand against the airports you have, you might come up with different proposals that align with where some of these airports are going with their capacity plans, as Mark mentioned with both Paine Field and SEA.

There are two other enabling issues to consider. One, the FAA is looking at the airspace system that affects all the airports in the Puget Sound region. That review will make a big difference for airspace capacity — the interactions among airports, arrival and departure paths, and so on. That has to be aligned with this effort.

The other is surface transportation. This region has surface congestion. Congestion and delay extend the time it takes to get to an airport, making some airports more or less reachable depending on travel time. Washington has always been good at this. It’s very important to look at the intermodal strategies available — highway, transit and light rail to airports, intercity passenger rail, high‑speed rail — and how those align with the different airports to get residents and visitors in and out, and perhaps open up different considerations about what airports can serve what populations.

So a lot of the focus for the second half of this year is managing the existing infrastructure and capacity to address demand — looking at the airport plans in place to increase capacity, and how those align with both surface transportation and the FAA’s airspace efforts. That sounds complex because it is. As Mark said, we have airside capacity, terminal capacity, and roadway/landside capacity, all of which need to be balanced to get the service levels you want.

In a way, this should be comforting to people who worry about the externalities of airports and aviation, because before you start building new airports in Washington, doesn’t it make more sense to optimize the infrastructure investments you’ve already made, and get people in and out of the airports you have most efficiently? This management and optimization is where we’re putting a lot of the focus for the second half of 2026. From what we’ve seen, all the airports in the region understand the need to manage and optimize capacity, and they’re all open to working with each other. From our standpoint, that’s very good.

**23:45 — Consultant (facilitation):** Peter, one of the things you and I have talked about is that compared to, say, the Washington, D.C. airports or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, we don’t have a consolidated airport authority for the region. Instead we have a system of different authorities representing different constituencies. That means we have to pursue coordination strategies a little uniquely.

**24:16 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** That’s right. Though we have an advantage they don’t: if you break apart the physical capacity, it exists. We have more physical capacity — particularly in Western Washington — than those comparable big cities. The real question is how you talk to each other, how you coordinate the capacity and the constraints. What are the constraints at SEA? At Boeing Field? Just to use three examples. That gets into three‑dimensional chess very quickly, because at one the constraint may be the ground space available for aircraft, at another the road‑lane availability to access the airport. We need to combine all those and say where the capacity is, where the constraints are, and — in the “philosopher king” theory, if we were in charge of all this — how we’d move these pieces around. Once we figure that out, we can go back and look, as a practical matter, at whether we can accomplish it.

**25:32 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Does that make sense to the members of the work group as a focus for the second half of ’26?

**25:39 — Member:** It strikes me as one of those situations where it’s like stacking up a bunch of pieces of Swiss cheese — eventually there’s one hole remaining, and that’s kind of the best answer when you line them all up. That metaphor just came to me as you were talking about all the different constraints.

## Beyond Puget Sound; environmental and “soft” constraints

**26:00 — Consultant:** And that leads us to a solution, or a set of solutions. To continue your analogy: the last couple of meetings we’ve been stacking the Swiss cheese. Now we need to look at the holes.

**26:16 — Member:** I also think we need to be thinking beyond the Puget Sound airports. Vancouver, B.C., maybe Portland, maybe Bellingham — even central Washington has capacity. It’s just a question of how you access it rapidly, because people want to get to and from the Puget Sound area expeditiously. So it’s a bigger picture, to me at least, than just the Puget Sound.

**27:18 — Maria Batayola:** Thank you. I really appreciate this discussion, and anchoring us back to our initial discussion. The piece I want us all to remember is that the SeaTac airport Sustainable Airport Master Plan has the approval of the FAA under NEPA; SEPA doesn’t have as much influence in changing things, but rather in being able to ask more questions. So it looks like it should be part of the assumption in our discussion — that some percentage of the anticipated increase is going to be offloaded. SEA has identified the constraint demand it’ll be able to meet through the 31 projects. What that brings us to is beginning — hopefully in the second half of this year — to identify the principles we’re going to use and the potential capacities that have been identified, and recommend that to the legislature for the next stage of our work. I realize there’s a dance we need to do, but I think that’s going to be a good basic assumption in our planning. Thank you.

**28:48 — Consultant:** Just for clarification for the members: the capacity shortfall the region is looking at, based on current forecasts, already takes into account the buildout of the SEA master plan, if it gets approved, and Paine Field. So the shortfall is after those are completed.

**29:09 — Steve (consultant):** The idea is to stack these up. We have today’s capacity, then the capacity plans we know are on the books — and we may learn about more as we go along. Then we look at what the CAWG can say about optimizing capacity by making changes or coordinating with the airport operators to move things around and get that little extra bump. Once all that’s done, we’ll have a sense — say, for argument’s sake, capacity is tapped in 2036 — and we can look at the economic effects of that lid on capacity, and the effects on passengers and service levels. Once you reach capacity, you get more delays and congestion, which has an economic cost. For the businesses and people who rely on aviation, we can actually value that. That’s in part what we’re charged to bring back to the legislature: an estimate of the value of delay and congestion, and the economic cost to the state.

But our point all along has been: let’s play the hand first — where we are today, what capacity is coming, and what we can squeeze out of the system by better using the infrastructure built through public investments, and by talking with the airlines about their network strategies, how these align or don’t, and what costs or benefits these strategies could have for them.

**31:02 — Maria Batayola:** It’s also important to include community in that assessment — that’s where environment and health need to be included in this big picture. There’s a polarity going on. We have the HEAL Act at the state level. We have communities actually experiencing extreme heat demands and all of the greenhouse gases. We have to integrate that, otherwise we’re not going to come up with any progressive recommendations. We’ll just wind up doing the same old, same old — and that’s not what we’re about. We need to do something better.

**31:40 — Consultant:** We certainly agree. One reason for looking at multimodal strategies is to better manage and optimize the system — and to get a read from communities about whether they want light rail to better connect an airport, additional roadway capacity, or new airports. All of those have different costs and benefits, and we hope both members of the CAWG and the greater public provide input.

**32:18 — Maria Batayola:** We need to distinguish — it’s just that it’s always an afterthought. It has to be part of the criteria. You cannot always make it an afterthought, because that’s not the message we want to give our Washingtonians. We want to give a message that’s comprehensive, that includes their health and well‑being.

**32:43 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Yes, that’s right. What I was beginning to say is that we need to make sure we don’t just focus on the hard constraints — the infrastructure constraints. We need equally to look at the soft constraints. Environmental constraints are an absolutely critical soft constraint, but there are other critical soft constraints as well, including the public’s willingness to travel to Eastern Washington, the travel time the public will accept, and the impact of additional travel time to reach different airports. Those are much more difficult to assess, but they’re really important. If you come out of the first analysis and say, “Great, we have plenty of runway” — but nobody’s going to use it — that doesn’t get you very far. So Maria’s point is very well taken: once you have an assessment of your physical capacity and facilities, you need to layer on top of that the other constraints.

**33:39 — Maria Batayola:** The other piece that’s so invaluable about what you’re saying is that we are, in a way, presenting new information. What is normative in Europe in terms of travel time and travel comfort? We have an obligation to also say what’s happening in the global picture, not just the local — otherwise we’ll get the same old answers: “Oh, my current trip is 45 minutes; I don’t want it to be an hour and a half.” This is part of the bigger Washington initiatives — how we keep going, and there are a lot of challenges for Washingtonians right now. So let’s take the high road on it.

**34:38 — Steven Pollinsky (Commerce):** On the issue of environmental justice, I think this is why a programmatic environmental impact statement approach was placed on the table at the last meeting. The committee may want to review, or hear from, the Department of Ecology, which has PEIS experience — or other implementers, unless it falls to the consultant. It’s not clear to me how that recommendation, or any recommendation, goes forward. It’s also not entirely clear to me whether the consultants intend to recommend specific improvements at specific airports, or to recommend sustainable processes for the state to move forward over the next 20 years to address aviation needs.

**35:36 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** I can speak to that. The consultant team itself would not make recommendations. What we would do is inventory alternatives to achieve the ends the state set in its enabling statute, and then it would be up to the members of the CAWG, working with the state, to take it from there and make recommendations. We really view our job as doing the research and the inventories, making sure all these efforts are aligned, applying some system thinking, benchmarking against regions that are similar both in the U.S. and elsewhere, and providing that list of alternatives to you all so you can decide what to do with them. We’re not the voting members or the actors; we’re acting to facilitate and support you.

**36:36 — Nordby:** Is there anybody else online with a question or comment right now? I don’t see any hands raised. Okay.

## Portland, Vancouver, and Bellingham: catchment analysis

**36:55 — Mark Champany (CNS):** On the agenda it’s “discussion of the capacity gap,” but there’s more under there. We’ve reviewed the PSRC reports and the state reports. We looked into some YVR and PDX impacts that could be discussed if needed, and we’ve identified the SEA and Paine Field improvements — the layers of the Swiss cheese, to keep using that analogy. I’m happy to address the Vancouver and Portland pieces. Christina, if I could share my screen —

*(Screen‑sharing setup.)*

**38:48 — Steve (consultant):** We took a good look at Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, and some of the other Washington airports as ways of addressing capacity gaps in the PSRC area. This chart shows the catchment area of a 90‑minute drive time between Vancouver at the top, Bellingham, Seattle, and Portland. Unfortunately, from a drive‑time standpoint, they almost segment perfectly from population centers — which means if you traveled to Portland or Vancouver from the core Seattle region, you’d be going farther than a 90‑minute drive time, and in a region like this, that’s considered pretty far.

What’s interesting in Washington: the two airports with the greatest overlap are Tri‑Cities (Pasco) and Spokane, which is great for them — they have alternative airports. But for Western Washington, that’s not really in play. Bellingham is an option for people in Northern Washington, but today they’re leaking a lot of flights to Vancouver. With some of the border issues that have heightened in the last year or so, we’re seeing fewer southbound travelers to Bellingham than we used to, to avoid the taxes in the Canadian aviation system.

So it’s pretty segmented. Now, if you took Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland and put in north‑south high‑speed rail — a dedicated line traveling at higher speed — that would open up the catchment area to many more travelers going north or south, making all the airports a little more in play. But both Portland and Vancouver themselves are growing and will add passengers. It’s not as though, 10 or 15 years from now, there will be scores of available capacity at those two airports.

Portland is growing now — up to about 20 million enplanements or so; they’re still recovering a bit from COVID. A lot of West Coast airports, including Seattle to some degree, Vancouver, and Portland, have been hurt by the decline of international travel, especially to Asia, but they’re starting to recover. YVR is now at record levels again — about 27 million passengers, or 13.5 million enplanements — and, given the airline service there, it’s not really an alternative to Seattle the way Portland, with Alaska Airlines and network strategies at Moses Lake, might be. At Vancouver there’s very little overlap in airline service.

Out to 2055, Portland is going to add about 19.5 million and Vancouver about 25 million for their own demand. So the practical reality is that between Vancouver, Portland, and Seattle, you have a lot of regions that will need additional capacity to meet their own economic growth. Stated another way: they’re not really relievers for Seattle. Even if you introduced north‑south high‑speed rail, they’d then face their own capacity shortfalls going forward.

**43:07 — Steve (consultant):** So, Mr. Chairman, I don’t know if that’s good news or not, but I think you’re saying we need to look beyond Vancouver and Portland — because that’s not going to provide sufficient relief, not excess capacity to relieve this region. Now, if you put in north‑south high‑speed rail, you could offer the possibility of reducing some short‑haul flying that connects those three cities, and maybe even the last segment of a flight — but that’s not an appreciable impact on the overall mismatch between capacity and demand between now and 2055.

**43:54 — Consultant:** So, Gary, if I get where you’re going — Eastern Washington could be an answer there, if you had the surface transportation to better connect those regions.

**44:07 — Gary Wirt:** There’s capacity over there, whether that’s Moses Lake, the Tri‑Cities, or Yakima. But the key to that, as you’ve suggested, is high‑speed surface transportation, and that comes at a cost. They have that in Europe. Nobody over there seems to be afraid of digging a tunnel — and that’s what it would take, in my opinion, if we were to take advantage of the capacity in Eastern Washington.

**44:44 — Consultant:** The consultant team, as opposed maybe to you all, understands the state might have to make those types of investments at some point. But returning to what we said at the beginning: inside our window, before that capacity would come online, we’re going to face constraints. So what can we do to help alleviate and address some of those constraints in the meantime? That’s why we focus more on management and optimization than on high‑speed rail or a new airport site.

**45:17 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** To put a little damper on the conversation: we have to be careful about making analogies to Europe. It’s useful to know what’s going on, but we have to be practical about the realities in America. We see, for example — speaking sarcastically — the “success” of California high‑speed rail. It has been extraordinarily difficult. We have not been able to achieve some of the things that are just routine in Europe: tunneling, high‑speed rail, transfer between rail and air modes. It’s not here. So we have to be very careful not to engage too much in “if only” thinking, because we have to accept who we are.

**46:18 — Member:** I’d agree with Peter’s comment. We want to look at the technology coming out of Europe, but the states east of the Mississippi and Europe are more apples‑to‑apples, because your major metropolitan cities are closer together — more opportunities for infrastructure. My question would be emerging regions similar to the Western states — Southeast Asia, other areas where you have greater distances between population centers and greater need for surface transportation improvements. Maybe we shift our focus away from the “good old country” and start looking at what’s being done in these emerging markets. Even Australia probably would be an opportunity, because it’s a similar geography — oranges to oranges with the Western states.

**47:20 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Your point is very well taken. Australia is both a good and bad example. It took them 30 years to plan a second, replacement airport for Sydney. Their experience on things like rail and aviation is pretty similar to the United States. So yes, we should look at what’s going on elsewhere, but through a screen of what is acceptable, or anticipated, behavior by the consumer in the United States.

## Roads, I‑5, and the FAA airspace review

**47:54 — Ann Richart:** Steve, could you go back to the slide that showed the 90‑minute drive times? And while you’re doing that — one of the things I’d like this group to consider for our recommendations is that the state do some solid multimodal planning for all of these things. When we show the 90‑minute drive times and the lack of overlap between SEA and PDX, at the same time those airports are growing, traffic on I‑5 is growing too, and that’s going to change those drive times and their shape, and people’s tolerance. This 90‑minute drive time, I assume, Steve, is under optimal conditions?

**48:59 — Steve (consultant):** Either optimal conditions or an average — which those of us who drive I‑5 through the Seattle area know.

**49:07 — Ann Richart:** I already know — and this isn’t from studies, just from talking to people — that a lot of people who live in the Olympia area or south, still in that purple area, are already driving to PDX because it’s a more reliable drive time. So I want to factor that in with the same kind of studies WSDOT is doing on I‑5 capacity, and put those together.

**49:42 — Consultant:** That’s why something like light rail to Paine Field would be a game changer. Even though it might be lengthier than a European high‑speed‑rail equivalent, it’s going to be much more reliable and it’s going to get people there. The real trick is to get them door‑to‑door — so you’re not getting off light rail and then having to get on a shuttle to reach where you want to go. In Europe, in places like Amsterdam, you arrive, go down the escalator from baggage to the high‑speed rail, and take that to city center. Unfortunately, even in the Northeast, we don’t have that integration between rail and airports that many of the old‑country cities have.

**50:32 — Nordby:** Buck, you have your hand up.

**50:36 — Buck Taft:** For the Tri‑Cities and probably Spokane, we generally use the 90‑minute drive time, but when you’re looking at large hubs, it’s a little further than that. I know for a fact that our biggest leakage of passengers out of the Tri‑Cities to Seattle is the Yakima Valley — so you’re significantly outside that 90‑minute drive time for people driving from Yakima to Seattle. I don’t know if we want to use a larger map, or if it even matters, but for us our biggest leakage is to SEA. Most of our passengers who don’t fly out of the Tri‑Cities, in that orange area, go to Seattle.

**51:27 — Consultant:** We’re also seeing the exact contrary trend. All over the United States we’re seeing a growth of small secondary airports because of the uncertainty Ann was talking about. I could get to SEA in 90 minutes, maybe — but I absolutely know I can get to Tri‑Cities in 120 minutes, so I’ll go to Tri‑Cities. That’s happening in the larger urban areas. It used to be you had to have the big airport — the O’Hares of the world, the LAXs of the world. Now the Paine Field model is becoming more common, where folks have a choice: hypothetically faster to the bigger airport, but guaranteed faster to the smaller one. Santa Barbara, California — a very small airport — had an advertising campaign for a couple of years: “We are Los Angeles’s international airport.” They have no international traffic at all, but you can park free, get on a plane easily, fly to LAX, and connect to Australia. Their traffic went through the roof. That kind of marketing, particularly when you’re connecting into the hub, is great from one perspective, but it doesn’t address the airfield or airport capacity at the hub you’re going to — it only affects road transportation. In Los Angeles, road access is the absolute key constraint for most of the airports.

**53:12 — Rich Mueller:** A question — this is Rich. Do you have the profile of the individuals leaking over to Seattle? Do you know if it’s people planning to travel internationally, or just generally that you’re losing people out there?

**53:28 — Buck Taft:** I just know that generally the majority of our leakage is the Yakima Valley going to Seattle. I don’t know who, what, or why.

**53:37 — Rich Mueller:** Sorry — pop quiz. Just wondering if you had it.

**53:47 — Member:** I can tell you, I’m one that leaks. I’m a leaker. We live in Yakima, and there are like five buses a day between Yakima and SEA. It’s very convenient to get on the bus and go over to SEA. So that’s what happens off the road, and it makes somebody happy. We don’t drive over here, because then you’ve got to pay $25 a day to park. So you just take the bus directly to SEA and it works fine. Or fly over on Alaska — that’s another option.

**54:29 — Member:** Following up on the discussion about the load on the roads and I‑5 — is there already an existing study on the increase in road travel, a projection to 2050 given population growth, so we have that information while we’re assessing the rest of the planning?

**54:53 — Consultant:** I’m sure there is, and we can get it and fold it in.

**54:58 — Member:** There’s an I‑5 master plan underway right now, and I’d be happy to put you all in touch with them.

**55:08 — Member:** You mentioned an FAA airspace system review that’s going on. Do we know when it’ll be finished, and roughly what it might say? Is that one of those “using new technologies, GPS, to put more airplanes into the same sky” efforts?

**55:32 — Steve (consultant):** Exactly. The FAA is not particularly transparent about its planning processes — that’s probably generous. No, we don’t know. It’s an airspace with challenges, and with the growth it’s inevitable the FAA will have to look at it, as well as some of the interactions that happen under certain weather patterns and the interaction between Boeing Field and Seattle. I don’t know if you all have more information on when that starts, what the involvement is, and where it’s going.

**56:18 — Consultant:** No, we don’t know when it will stop.

**56:21 — Rich Mueller:** Peter mentioned three‑dimensional chess, and I appreciate that. The FAA is studying more efficient routes that burn less fuel and get aircraft on the ground sooner. But if they can actually get more aircraft, more efficiently, to an airport that’s at capacity — then what?

**56:44 — Consultant:** That’s right. Don’t get me wrong — it’s good. It saves miles, fuel, emissions. But on the lower level of the chessboard, the airport has to be able to accept those aircraft, and then the ground transportation has to take care of those people. I think Rich is exactly right. Ultimately it boils down to runway capacity. You could move these things around to be more noise‑ and fuel‑efficient, but your runway can only accept so many operations per hour.

**57:20 — Consultant:** That sets up a great analogy — the FAA’s airspace is a system, and it interacts. Right now the airports in Western Washington are individually making decisions. Some things that could be considered as we move forward: the state has a great system plan, but it’s for the entire state, and it just builds up what the individual airports are doing. Are there things within that system of Western Washington airports that could be optimized to take advantage of what the FAA is doing with airspace? Steve talked about how Boeing Field has restrictions on departures in a certain flow at SEA. Even Renton, in poor weather, has restrictions that impact Boeing Field. So there are a lot of interactions at the airspace level. If there’s more chess we can consider on the ground among the airport system, and marry those two things together, that’s an ideal situation.

**58:25 — Rich Mueller:** The airport managers have a relationship — the Washington Airport Management Association, Northwest AAAE, and AAAE. I realize this is a state group, but in our master planning, we’re taught to look at our own airports, and the money the FAA releases for our master plans is essentially blinders — just for us to think about ourselves. Because we have the relationships, we call each other up, and we try to make that part of the master plan. But trying to make that a system — maybe that’s something we as a group could encourage the state to encourage. The state is here over the next 60 days; we’re putting our plans together for next year’s spending. Not that we’re in a great spot with the FAA right now, because of some revenue issues, but for those of us trying hard to make everything work — maybe there’s an opportunity, if the FAA would allow us, to scope. We have a small one coming up, and I’m happy to make that ask: can we have a little piece? A few dollars? Can we send the consultants down that path a little, to say, this is who we are, this is where we want to go, but as part of the system — can we have a chapter on that? A page? Because normally, when I’m talking about my master plan, I can’t talk about other airports. That’s not what it’s about — other than “these are the two nearest airports.”

**1:00:15 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Rich, there are two pieces you touched on. One is decision‑making — you’re supposed to have blinders on and look at your airport. The other is money — you’re not supposed to look at whether you could spend your money at another airport, or another airport could spend money at yours, because it’s good for their master plan. Both are really important, and that’s not something a system plan generally looks at on a statewide basis. They say, “What’s going on?” — not, “Can we rob Peter to pay Paul?” — which may in fact be a prudent thing to do, if your master plan says here’s the problem and another master plan says I’ve got extra of one criterion. That’s the psychology of the thing.

**1:01:08 — Rich Mueller:** One of the things I appreciate about being an American: there are schools of thought. One is that if you keep adding people who want a piece of pie, you cut the pie smaller and smaller, and everyone gets less and gets grumpy. But here in the United States, we can just go bake another pie. So I’m not looking to fritter away money, but maybe there’s a chance to bring a second pie in — because the FAA cares about capacity too, just from the back to the front. There are some new people rolling into the FAA into different positions, finally going from temporarily assigned to permanent, and some of those people, I believe, do have that mindset. So I think we’re moving in the right direction. We just need to ask for it. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

## Building your way out; slot controls; the case for a system

**1:02:05 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** The problem in Western Washington, in the Northeast, in many congested areas of the United States, is that we can’t build our way out of the problem anymore. For years, you basically built and you filled it. We have more public airports than any country in the world, by far. We kept building airports, adding highway lane miles, transit, rail — but all done from individual modal agencies in a disjointed, unconnected way. We said, “When one node of the network gets bad, we’ll just build some more.” In a region like this, you can’t build much anymore. So the necessity becomes to operate it like a quasi‑system, even if the same actor isn’t putting all the modes together.

What we’ve really detailed this year: we started out looking at aviation demand and said there’s not going to be enough, and we can’t build within the period of this study to address the problem. So the only way to address it is thinking like a system and coordinating among the actors — not just the airports, but the surface agencies, light rail, and others — to make the most of the infrastructure we have. Because if we don’t, what will happen in the mid‑2030s is the FAA and DOT will visit Seattle and tell the airport it’s now under slot controls. People like Ben from Alaska, and the community, won’t be able to add those new flights anymore. There’ll be a lid on those flights, and the locus of decision‑making will move from Seattle to Washington, D.C. So Washington State will lose its ability to set its own goals and address its air service development — it’ll be shifted inside the Beltway. Nobody here wants that. You want to retain control. So what we’re really talking about is what measures will postpone that date as long as possible and make the system work together better.

**1:04:26 — Maria Batayola:** Thank you for that broader vision of trying to retain local control. The question from my thinking is: at what point can we as a group — or you as consultants — start articulating a different logic, other than just meeting the demand? Logic such as what’s regional, what’s international, and how you integrate that with the fact that it’s the airline companies that are the initiators of these routes. I’m curious how that approach can be integrated into what we’re doing.

**1:05:34 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** I don’t think it’s the role of the consultants to say what elements of the aviation system should be prioritized in an age of limits. I’d turn that back to the work group: if there are limits, what need to be the priorities? Obviously, you can take some things and say we don’t need 17 connections to San Diego every day — we’d rather have a new flight to Asia. But beyond that — the value to the community, the economy — we all get that. Those decisions: it’s a market‑based aviation system, and the airlines, working with the airports, will decide what capacity they have, where they can make money, and what’s good for the community. Our job is to provide the alternatives for managing and optimizing demand to the work group.

**1:06:31 — Nordby:** That leads well into my question. Assume we have a chapter in our annual report — “managing the Puget Sound airport capacity as a system” — and we’re telling the legislature here’s what you should do in legislation. What does that look like? What do we say in that chapter, based on how other airports manage systems, or on the conversations you’ve been having with the different airports? What needs to change in state law, or be funded, or be facilitated, so the legislature can enact it?

**1:07:18 — Steve (consultant):** Over the last year — or six months — we’ve done a lot. We’ve looked at what demand is coming, updated forecasts that were a bit dated from the other players, and reaffirmed that we’re going to have capacity limits. We’re telling the legislature — which is just empirical — that the region will be out of capacity by the mid‑2030s. We’re trying to make the most of the infrastructure we have through management and optimization. We can inventory recommendations for the role of the airports and surface transportation, which you can then turn into specific recommendations to the legislature. For the second half, it’s more about the multimodal solutions — making sure we know what SEA, Paine Field, and Boeing Field are doing — and providing revised estimates about the ability to meet demand, understanding there’s no firm figure. We’ve seen even since we last met the price of oil go up, come back down, now maybe go up again. The system’s very dynamic, but the infrastructure is fixed — our capital assets. So we’re operating a very dynamic industry with a very fixed set of infrastructure, and we have to explain that to the legislature. They put certain boundaries on us in the enabling statute about what we should and shouldn’t look at, and we’re abiding by that. If we think there’s something they said we shouldn’t look at that they might want to, we’ll give that to you and let you say it to them.

**1:09:16 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Steve, I’d give two very concrete answers to your question, along the same lines. One: both authorize and mandate cooperation among the transportation providers — the airports, the road systems, the light rail systems. Not just authorized — mandated. Number two, here’s the hard part: State legislature, pay for it.

That goes back to what Gary or Alan was saying about Europe. One of our challenges: in Europe, most transportation is funded at the national level. It used to be that airport infrastructure was funded at the national level; less so today — some of it is, a lot of it’s not. And inter‑airport cooperation, back to Rich’s point, is not funded whatsoever. So if the state were to say — I’ll be hypothetical — “Here’s a pool of money for Rich to spend to make sure Rich and Arif can coordinate traffic,” not study it, but coordinate it — that’s a big deal. And optimize it.

## The aviation fuel tax and the case for a funded system

**1:10:42 — Nordby:** Charlie, Ben — I’m going first. Sorry, I’m looking up here and there are hands right here.

**1:10:53 — Ann Richart:** Peter said this in a couple of different ways, and I want to lay the groundwork for people who aren’t aware of how airport management works. The FAA regulates how airports can spend their money, and Peter just said the FAA does not allow airports to spend their money on system stuff. The FAA also regulates how the state spends the aviation fuel tax revenue the state gets. Right now, the state of Washington is in kind of hot water with the FAA, because the FAA is not clear that the state is spending the aviation fuel tax revenue on the aviation system. So it seems to me this is an opportunity for this group to tell the legislature: what we really need is a regional aviation system plan that — unlike a state aviation system plan — makes budget recommendations, and that the state also wants to fund.

**1:12:04 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Let me make one criticism of what you said. Take out the word “plan.” A plan is a great thing — but a regional *system*. The reason that’s important is that airports are allowed to trade money within a system. The Port Authority of New York trades money within its system. If the state legislature says, “We demand that the top — I’ll make it up — 10 airports in the state become a system,” now it has opened up an opportunity that doesn’t exist today. Arif is going to be very concerned about that, and I don’t blame him — but he also has opportunities. SEA has more money than most of the other airports, but it also has more needs and more capacity constraints than most. My point is that we can have that conversation, if the state directs us to, about how much it’s going to cost to optimize, or the potential benefits of doing so.

**1:13:16 — Ann Richart:** That’s exactly right. But I don’t want it to get lost that there’s a midpoint — the state can spend money on a system without those constraints between which airport it’s going to.

**1:13:33 — Member:** How much is the fuel tax revenue?

**1:13:40 — Member:** It’s about 20 million a year. So that’s almost like real money.

**1:13:44 — Ann Richart:** It’s not real money. That’s lunch money.

**1:13:47 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Well, but Ann — imagine the group said, “To manage and optimize the infrastructure we have, we recommend these five enabling projects,” and they could be airport projects or surface transportation projects. You go back to the state and say, “Look at this multimodally — not just for the airports, but for enabling infrastructure that makes the airports work better.” How would we do that? I think that’s a very practical recommendation, and it gets the sleeves rolled up and appreciates the coordination among those different entities.

**1:14:26 — Mark Champany (CNS):** A couple of things — just watching the time on the agenda. Maybe we keep going till 11:30 and shift the breaks a little. This is great discussion; I don’t want to stop it. Let’s go to the folks, and maybe we’ll consider the break at the bottom. Ben, thank you.

**1:14:50 — Ben Brookman:** Two points. One: while it’s true that airlines are the ultimate determiners of where capacity is allocated, it’s ultimately the market and the data we have on passenger demand that determine where we fly. It’s truly a market system, and the visibility we have into how travelers are going, where they’re going, and whether there’s nonstop service, is what causes airlines to determine where they put capacity. It’s not that airlines just put capacity wherever they want — we’re ultimately following market trends. Second: one thing I heard was determining how many flights a day we need to San Diego versus an international route. There’s no legal right for anyone to determine or discriminate where capacity is ultimately allocated — that would be a violation of FAA grant assurances and cause a whole bunch of other issues. So I’d caution everyone that framing it as picking winners and losers from a route perspective is not something anyone has legal authority to do.

**1:16:06 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** I’d add to Ben’s point, going back to the comment about slots. If you have to get slots, neither Ben nor the marketplace is going to decide that — it’s going to be decided by the Department of Transportation in Washington. I think I can speak for Ben in saying Alaska Airlines would not find that good, and I can speak for the consumers in saying that’s not good.

**1:16:28 — Maria Batayola:** What I’m learning from this discussion is that the idea of developing different logic concepts — regional airport versus international — really is a new request to ask of the legislature, so we can look at this in creative ways. The pivot is that most of our airports in Washington are public, and therefore we’re looking at this as an opportunity for our governments to lead — for our legislators to lead, of course informed by our communities. So thank you for helping me get that light‑bulb moment.

**1:17:26 — Mark Champany (CNS):** It’s been great discussion, and we want to keep it going — but we were slotted for a 15‑minute break at 11:15. Why don’t we take a 15‑minute break now and come back at 11:40? Sound good? Okay.

*(Break.)*

## After the break: system management and the moving‑walkway example

**1:17:59 — Mark Champany (CNS):** We’ll jump back in for the conversation. Post‑break, are there any other comments?

**1:18:10 — Nordby:** I was thinking about questions during the break. We left off with concrete recommendations about system managing. The follow‑up question is: what do you envision system managing does, or allows the airports to do, for the gap? You’ve got a hand up, Charlie — I’ll call on you after my question. So what do you think airports are able to do? Let me put the question back to you.

**1:18:48 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** How much freedom are we given financially? Because if we operate this as a system — and whoever decided that, I’m assuming that’s the state legislature — all bets are off, and then you’ve got an enormous amount of freedom to spend money across airports. You have enormous freedom, where you can show a capacity constraint, to work with your operators to encourage them to spread among airports. You have to be careful about forcing them, but encouraging is quite permissible. And if you have some money that is not airport money, spending it on surface access — which at places like SEA and maybe even Paine Field is critical. So the flexibility is really almost the limits of your creativity, if you are given that authority.

**1:19:49 — Mark Champany (CNS):** And Evan, let me say — one of the pieces in our work order for the second half of ’26 is for Peter to take the lead on providing a legal and regulatory view of system management, comparing that to where things are today and saying what’s permitted and what’s not. We’ll give that back to the work group so everybody has clarity on what that would mean. Then you can decide whether to use it to inform any recommendation to the legislature.

**1:20:22 — Nordby:** So, to use a real practical example: let’s say one of our multimodal priorities was making sure it was as fast and easy as possible at Paine Field for passengers to get from the terminal to the light rail station, but there was a cost associated with a moving walkway. Setting aside where you’d put it — a system, or at least coordination, could potentially allow SEA to fund that moving walkway at Paine, for example.

**1:21:14 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Once you get rid of those artificial barriers, looking for sources of money becomes pretty flexible. Maybe it’s SEA, maybe it’s state transportation money, maybe it’s the aviation fuel tax — I can keep going, because these sorts of infrastructure require a capital stack that’s not just one source. If you get rid of the boundaries that limit your sources, then you’ll have to think about all the other needs you want to spend that massive amount of aviation fuel money on. For those not in the room — I was smiling when I said that.

**1:22:04 — Member:** No, no — it builds the entryway to the walkway. All kidding aside, I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t want to go spending Arif’s money, but the point is that if you sit down at a table with all of these constraints, you can figure out how best to fund them, rather than saying, “Sorry, carriers at Paine Field, you have to pay for that moving walkway,” or “Sorry, Sound Transit, you have to pay for it.” Let’s figure out what the best funding source is.

**1:22:36 — Steve (consultant):** Let me give one other practical example, because yours is a bit hypothetical and we haven’t seen it done yet. I’ve done work for the Metropolitan Airports Commission in Minneapolis–St. Paul. They have six airports in the system. One, MSP, is a Delta hub. They are permitted to subsidize the other five non‑commercial‑service airports in the MAC in order to divert the general aviation traffic that would otherwise be at MSP to airports like St. Paul Downtown and Flying Cloud. That frees up capacity at MSP so Delta and the other airlines can have more flights. Without that, that GA traffic would be at MSP, and you wouldn’t have the ability to have as many commercial‑service flights. Because they’re a system, they can cross‑subsidize those other general aviation airports and improve MSP’s performance by reducing delays and congestion and dedicating more of the airport to commercial airlines.

## Prioritizing; the “regional approach”; a matrix of constraints

**1:24:00 — Charlie Riordan:** Sorry I finally got on. Good discussions — it’s difficult to do remotely, and I wish I were there. I still feel like we’re building our scope, seeing where we’re going. I think Rich suggested it first, but there’s been a lot of discussion about the regional approach, and I like that — I second it. I want to jump back and talk about the stacking of things we’re going to look at to alleviate the capacity problems at SeaTac. Once you stack them and line them up, are we going to prioritize them? And once we prioritize, are we going to say “these are the ones we can actually work on, these give us the biggest reward”? Which one to work on first, which second? And it was beneficial for me to learn that PDX and Vancouver have their own capacity issues — of course they’re growing, and they may not be able to help us. Having said that, are we going to take a look at the other airports — Paine Field, Boeing Field, Bellingham, South, Olympia — and up and down the I‑5 corridor, to use those to help us with our capacity constraints? I know we’re also talking about policy issues, which are more outside my wheelhouse but all important. That’s my input, thank you.

**1:26:39 — Consultant:** I would just say yes, we are doing that.

**1:26:48 — Gary Wirt:** I don’t want to get away from aviation, but obviously we’re talking multimodal. At some point we truly have to bring the multimodal conversation in — whether that’s bringing in public transportation, understanding this is about Washington State, not the nation. However, at some point the FAA is going to tell SeaTac what’s going to happen, because we can no longer build out. There is that outside influence — better we embrace it now than address it when it’s out of our hands later. So bring in transit, whether that’s the Federal Transit Administration or the Federal Railroad Administration, if nothing else to provide insight on what’s happening nationally, which will affect Washington State. I hate going back to Europe again, but Peter, my question is: as nice as it is that they have their systems integrated — the escalator down to the rail system — how much is freight tied in with the rest of their system? Are they truly a freight‑and‑passenger system we can learn pros and cons from? And if not, how do we tie some of that in? I think we had a presentation on passenger rail early in my participation, but where is that going to go now? Since then, the Federal Railroad Administration has moved the long‑distance study forward. There are opportunities for increased passenger rail in Washington State aside from I‑5. And Charlie, yes, most of the population is on this side of the state, but there’s still 20% on the other side, and it’s growing, and it’s where growth will provide opportunities statewide. High tide rises all boats. We still need to address the Columbia region so it can be a viable asset to the west side as we move forward. So I’d definitely try to get the state’s rail and transit offices in here as non‑voting members. As we vet aviation, when do we start bringing multimodal into the conversation, so it solves some aviation problems, but also starts looking at aspects that will be forced upon us at the federal level?

**1:29:53 — Consultant:** It’s a good comment. That gets back to what Ann was saying about the multimodal approach to a lot of this intermodal work.

*(Brief pause to sort out microphones — the room’s mics feed the TV/recording, so members are reminded to face the Meeting Owl camera and project.)*

**1:30:37 — Nordby:** I did have a couple of other thoughts. If we have another chapter in the annual report on the biggest bang‑for‑the‑buck constraints — things to address first — and if we’re envisioning our project as short‑, medium‑, and longest‑term, then in some of our conversations at the break we brought up that there are certain very identifiable constraints. What have you all seen so far in the airports here that we could recommend the legislature attack first, if we were prioritizing funding? Is it airside — some fuel tax money on a high‑speed runway exit at Paine Field that’s in their master plan, funding it years sooner than they might otherwise? Or another lane to the terminal at SEA, even though they just put one in? Or is it something else — seed funding for sustainable aviation fuel? Those real, specific, low‑hanging‑fruit, short‑term priorities. Maybe that’s a bigger question you can’t answer right now, but I’m thinking about making it as specific as possible for the legislature in the next session.

**1:32:37 — Steve (consultant):** I don’t think today’s the day for that, but we can provide what we’ve seen at the airports, perhaps at the next meeting, and what we’ve heard from them about what’s in their plans and how it will make a difference in capacity. On the rail and transit and multimodal side, that’s going to be a little of the work this fall, and we can talk about who might make sense to invite.

**1:33:14 — Steve (consultant):** Just to address your question about Europe: I used to be head of intermodal for U.S. DOT. When we met with the Europeans, we’d admire their passenger intermodal, and they’d admire our freight intermodal. Rail in Europe is there in major ports like Rotterdam, but nowhere near the freight network we have. They would very much like to take trucks off the road the way we’re able to, by putting containers on rail cars here. So there are learnings for both. The one thing that’s important, though, is that transportation can’t be thought of in isolation. As Eastern Washington areas like Spokane and Yakima develop more fully, you have to do transportation in the places you want to encourage land development, housing, businesses. Part of our problem in the past is that we’ve thought of those things in isolation, and then we’re in a pickle and figure out what to do about it.

**1:34:23 — Alan Adolf:** I don’t think I need a mic anyway — I’ve got a big mouth. That’s a question for DOT: there is the statewide system plan, but how much, outside of the state updating it, does aviation talk to ports, talk to transit? That’s something Yakima is facing — we’ve had all our modes siloed for a century, and we’re trying to break that down so we can be competitive, bring more people to our airport, and have passenger rail come back to central Washington for the first time in 40 years. It’s getting people to think outside that silo. If our own DOT isn’t having that conversation, and the transportation‑specific groups within our legislature aren’t coordinating and communicating, then we’re just going to be screaming into the wind unless we bring all of those to bear.

**1:35:44 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** That gets to what I mentioned earlier about authorizing and then even mandating cooperation. Can I go back to Evan’s question about priorities? I’d like to take the prerogative of asking Steve: from what you’ve seen of the data, what’s the constraint you’re most worried about today? I’m not saying it’s the most important, but in terms of timing priority, which one are you most worried about? I ask because, Evan, if we start going down that list and figure out timewise what’s most important, then look at it moneywise and by severity — it requires a complex analysis. I’m not sure I know the answer today: what is our biggest problem?

**1:36:34 — Steve (consultant):** Today’s problem is defined by the fact that capital infrastructure, and planning it, has a very long timeline in the United States. If the state has the ability today to accommodate, say, 55–60 million passengers, and we’re going to need 110–120 million in the future, how do you actually build that? But part of why we’re taking the first step first is that it’s not our decision, and it’s going to take so long, and in the meantime we’re going to have these constraints. So I’d rather turn it around and ask: what can you do on an incremental basis to improve the situation within the timeline of this group? That goes anywhere from SAMP, to the expansion at Paine Field, to perhaps reallocating capacity at Boeing Field. There’s a lot of different things you can do. I’d rather consider those on a full inventory that we give this group, so this group can make recommendations about what’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and the bang for the buck — how much of this investment will lead to how much capacity.

**1:38:02 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** It’s almost as though we need a matrix, where we list the capacity constraint and then what we need to solve it. If the answer is new technology, that goes further down. If it’s another lane on I‑5, we push that over to that group. If it’s a new high‑speed taxiway — I’m just using those illustrations. Once we have that at a granular level, we can talk about funding and timing much more.

**1:38:36 — Consultant:** I’ll add that it goes one step further, to whether the specific uses of certain property at airports are the best for the system. And that is extraordinarily controversial.

**1:38:53 — Alan Adolf:** One further step: we address the immediate needs — that’s SEA. Building out what we need, maximizing their capacity. Then you look at the second level — Paine Field, do that. But you’re also still looking at investing now across the modes into Tri‑Cities, Yakima, Spokane, Wenatchee, at low cost now versus higher cost in the future. It’s still that same dollar — maybe 95 cents goes to SEA, maybe 80, but even if Yakima gets the one penny it’s not getting now, to start addressing capacity, whether on‑site or off‑site, in preparation to benefit the system as a whole, then it’s cheaper 20 years from now than trying to come back to those non‑SeaTac airports and fund capacity growth. So the matrix idea is good, but spreading across is key, because we have to look at how long it takes to find the solution. If we’ve all decided the solution is high‑speed rail — great, that’s 40 years. But we have a problem in less than 40 years.

**1:40:20 — Consultant:** So what could we bring online in 2028, ’29, all the way up to 2100? What I’m hearing you say — using high‑speed rail as the “out” because it takes the longest, rail across the mountains, we’re not going to realize that in less than 40 or 50 years — okay, that’s great; we can start on that path on your Gantt chart or matrix, but it’s going to give you nothing for the next 40 years. Improved access to the interstate, though, you can do sooner. So you can have better transit between airports, or between airports and passenger rail facilities, while you’re still working on the tunnel through the Cascades or trying to get I‑5 high‑speed rail built. You can still invest a little at a lesser cost now. It might slow down those bigger‑ticket items, but you’re starting to address the lower‑level issues that could have cumulative benefits by the time you’re maxed out.

**1:41:33 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** I’m reminded of when Denver’s Stapleton Airport was facing a capacity crunch and decided to build a new airport. The first step they took was to extend the runway at the existing airport. That seemed crazy — why are you doing that? Because it was going to be five to seven years before the new airport was available, and they needed something to handle the next five to seven years. A lot of people thought it was nuts to improve an airport that was going to close. But your point is exactly there: if we look at this as a system, we know we have to do something today to improve I‑5, even though we’re eventually going to put rail down the middle.

**1:42:11 — Member:** Another thing that’s interesting, Peter, about the new Denver airport — it’s 30 to 35 years old now — they built it out in the farmland, 25 to 30 miles from downtown Denver. But now they have light rail all the way out there, so you can get there conveniently, and a whole city has cropped up around the airport. It’s amazing. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? But just decide — decide which comes first.

**1:42:53 — Nordby:** Stephen, you had your hand up and put it down.

**1:42:57 — Steven Pollinsky (Commerce):** Withdrawn. Keep going.

**1:43:01 — Nordby:** At some point I want to make sure we hear from everybody — some folks haven’t commented yet. Please jump in; I don’t want to cold‑call anybody. My professor hat back on. If you want to address thoughts about the work plan —

## The consultant work plan and what’s been accomplished

**1:43:47 — Mark Champany (CNS):** Charlie alluded to it — we’re still building our scope, and that’s the unique aspect of this group. With our consultant team, it’s a little dynamic: as we have conversations, we want to help you and have resources to do the work you want us to do. So we’ve built a work plan through next June, working with DOT. We’d continue these hybrid meetings — another three before the end of this year, and three into next year. We provided resources for a committee structure; we could accommodate up to three committees. Those would be virtual meetings between the official meetings, and depending on how they’re set up, they’d report back at the next meeting on their conversations and agenda. Then there are technical resources to support them: if topics come up in those committees, we’d have the ability, within the scope and fee, to do research so they can make decisions or give guidance.

The other items are topical areas we’ve covered — systems thinking, the intermodal adjacencies, and bringing resources in to talk to the work group about what’s going on in the other modes. Airport of the future — technology, different aircraft, fuel, even hydrogen fueling; what do those mean for the airports and the system? We talked a little about the cost of doing nothing: the state is updating its economic impact of the airports, but beyond that, if we don’t do anything to address this capacity constraint, what does that mean, both for recreational travel and for the businesses and the trickle‑down effect on the jobs that rely on aviation? And then, ultimately, an all‑encompassing piece on what we do about it — the concrete prioritization, whether that’s a matrix of the things that provide the best bang for the buck, or the best efficiency, or more capacity, and starting to pull it all together into some level of priority.

**1:47:07 — Steve (consultant):** The only thing I’d add: we continue to rescope and look at things, but if it’s okay, I thought I’d put up what we’ve achieved during the three meetings so far, which will be the basis of whatever form the annual report takes. Let me share that, and maybe we keep it up as we go.

**1:47:45 — Steve (consultant):** You’ll see what we’ve done: presented the information, updated the forecasts, talked about small‑community air service, tracked the updated forecasts with PSRC and WSDOT, analyzed the effects of changing demand, airline strategies, and passengers per operation, reviewed airport capacities as well as airspace limitations, and coordinated with the Port of Seattle on the SAMP expansion of existing facilities. We noted that site selections and multimodal alternatives are unlikely to provide significant new aviation capacity before 2045, and recommended that the near‑ and medium‑term focus should be on optimizing capacity — and we addressed your comments and questions. This laid the groundwork for the second‑half plan Mark indicated, and this material will all be in some form in the annual report. It may not seem it when we’re constantly talking about the future, but I think we’ve really knocked out both the baseline and the future challenges the state has. Now the question is what alternatives we have to address those, which we’ll be providing to you.

**1:49:35 — Nordby:** I think it’s a good place to leave off for lunch, and we’ll pick up. Think about that over lunch. We have the afternoon session from 1:15 to 2:45 — about 90 minutes — for further discussion, so keep the conversation going. Let’s break till 12:45.

*(Recording paused for lunch.)*

—

## Public comment

**1:50:18 — Staff:** We’ll go back and forth between in person and online. If you’d like to comment online, please raise your hand using the tool in the reaction section. Is there anyone in person who’d like to comment? First person, go ahead.

**1:50:30 — Kristen Prior (public):** Hello, Kristen Prior. You’ve graciously allowed me to sit in on your meetings, and I’ve learned so much. I was curious about a couple of things. Steve — I should have asked this way back — but when we were looking at the passenger growth numbers, was that correlated or adjusted for population growth, or is it just highly correlated to population growth?

**1:50:59 — Steve (consultant):** If you look at the forecast, it’s GDP‑related, and GDP obviously has projections of population growth in it. So the forecast itself is just the numbers, but it’s driven by GDP growth, which is based in part on population.

**1:51:20 — Kristen Prior (public):** I saw the correlation — I was wondering if travel demand was increasing at an increasing rate over population.

**1:51:27 — Steve (consultant):** That would be a question of whether there’s an increase in the propensity to travel. We’ve benchmarked the Seattle region on propensity to travel; it tends to be a little higher, but that’s because GDP is higher. As you become wealthier — as a country or as an individual — you fly more, and then it starts evening out. It gets asymptotic and doesn’t have the same growth rate anymore. We have that data — I think it was in our first presentation — and I’m happy to share it back.

**1:52:08 — Kristen Prior (public):** I think you did share it, but I couldn’t remember. The other thing — I was surprised, Rich, that you mentioned there was a state airport working group, but that there wasn’t more organized coordination, a system as you called it. I’d have thought it might be nice to have an overarching coordination of who’s doing which improvement. Related to that — Ann, you mentioned the funding from the aviation fuel tax. Is that already being used, and is it carved up? How’s it being used now, or is that a bad question?

**1:52:59 — Member:** Those are allocated by the legislature, and the concern of the FAA is that all of them aren’t being allocated to aviation projects.

**1:53:14 — Kristen Prior (public):** And to follow on — if we were going to have some co‑mingled funding, what would you think, Arif? Would you want to take your money and fund the high‑speed escalator at Paine Field, or would you feel like you wanted to protect your silo? I was just interested in that.

**1:53:34 — Arif Ghouse:** We’ve already been working together — we talk all the time, share best practices — but we understand the challenge we face in this state has to be a systems approach. We don’t look at it like “this is my airport, this is yours”; we look at it as a system. But where those dollars go is ultimately our elected body’s decision, not an individual manager’s. We have an elected body that decides where the funds go.

**1:53:59 — Kristen Prior (public):** One last thing: when we look at the matrix, if you try to prioritize recommendations and improvements — as you talked about what the potential benefit would be for relieving issues at SEA, but also how that would impact or alleviate congestion on the highway — being able to weigh benefits and cons by environmental impacts too. How is that going to impact the citizens? You hear the pro economically on one end, but you’re also weighting it by any detrimental impacts to the public, and then you have an aggregated score. That was the only other thing. Thanks.

**1:54:44 — Staff:** Thank you. Online — you’re now unmuted. Can you hear us?

**1:55:04 — Dr. [name unclear] (Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility):** Greetings, Chair Nordby and members. I’m co‑chair of the Climate and Health Task Force, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. Transport policy is health policy. Here’s how. Burning fuel produces PM2.5 particles that cause heart and lung disease, dementia, and premature death — and those are pricey. Transport is the largest source of carbon emissions in Washington. Aviation is the most energy‑intensive particle emitter per passenger mile. Those harms, and real money costs, are silently shifted to airport communities and health‑care systems, without informed consent, to treat costly illness and raise insurance costs for all of us.

Washington law and climate science require us to reduce emissions. So how? Let’s limit short‑hop flights and airport expansion. Today’s trains are the least energy‑intensive and lowest emitter per passenger mile. WPSR says: more trains, not more lanes, not more planes. Rather than build or expand airports and increase flights, we respectfully advocate a rapid mode shift to rail — more north‑south Cascades trips, and restoring the Seattle‑to‑Pasco passenger trains we had until 1980. So will we keep doing what we’re doing and get more of what we’ve got, or will we choose healthy transport modes? WPSR stands ready to advise you of the health consequences of aviation policy. Thank you for transport decisions that maintain our public health.

**1:56:55 — Staff:** Seeing no one else in person, and no hands online, that concludes the public comment portion. For those who didn’t get a chance, you can always submit public comment on the website under the contact tab. I’ll turn it back over to Evan.

## Afternoon session: Chehalis‑Centralia Airport presentation

**1:57:22 — Nordby:** We’re going to pick up the discussion we paused for lunch — solutions for the capacity gap, and looking ahead to continuing work in the second half of the year on the annual report. Before we do, I’ll give Brandon a chance to share a little about his airport, since not everybody’s going on the tour, and we’ll hear the rest on the tour.

**1:58:01 — Brandon Rakes:** Thank you. My name is Brandon Rakes, airport director for the Chehalis‑Centralia Airport. The way I always describe our airport: we’re big for a little airport, but little for a big airport. We have great infrastructure. We’re approaching our 100th anniversary next year — we’ve been around not quite as long as aviation, but pretty close.

We’re really on the edge of a new chapter. A few years ago we started our master plan update, and one key item I wanted to include was looking at the future and how we could best find our niche. So we focused on advanced air mobility in our master plan update, and since then it’s opened the door to reimagine what a general aviation airport could be. You start to look at your role in the community — we’re already an economic engine — but what can we do in addition? As we look at clean aviation: aviation traditionally isn’t the cleanest mode of transportation, but electric‑motor‑driven aircraft give us an opportunity to take advantage of clean, efficient air travel. So we start looking at airports as energy hubs within our community, because if we’re going to electrify the aircraft, we need to electrify our airports. We also started looking at adding hydrogen as a fuel source long term. With our location between Seattle and Portland, right on I‑5, we’re a natural multimodal hub. A couple of years ago we received a grant, and in 2025 we started a hydrogen multimodal hub feasibility study. We’re well underway, looking at the possibility of including hydrogen to help fuel aircraft in the future. That’s a little about our airport. I look forward to talking more on the tour and answering any questions today.

**2:00:25 — Ann Richart:** Can I add my own two cents? For a big little airport, Brandon and Chehalis and Lewis County have shown remarkable leadership in developing the airport in a way that’s financially sustainable, and in looking at the future of transition in the aviation industry and figuring out how they fit into it. So good job, Brandon — I wanted to give you a public attaboy.

**2:01:01 — Brandon Rakes:** Thank you. Unfortunately my boss left early today — but thank you, Ann. I appreciate that.

**2:01:06 — Mark Champany (CNS):** Just to tag onto that — it’s why we identified this as a potential host, so we could hear what’s going on there. And to Alan’s point earlier about the long lead time, and the little things airports can do to set themselves up for the future — Chehalis is a good example. Some of the things Brandon’s talking about, they’re getting there, and 10 or 15 years from now they’ll really be ready, where other airports might not be.

**2:01:39 — Brandon Rakes:** When we talk about what we can do right now, we have some really low‑hanging fruit at our public‑use airports across the state. We have roughly 130 public‑use airports in Washington. If we were to electrify one‑third of those, I’d estimate we could do it for less than the cost of one bridge over I‑5. When you look at return on investment and how we can help move people and goods around the state — this won’t solve all the problems, but it will go a long way toward preparing us for the future, and we can do it for a relatively low cost. Not that $40 million would be inexpensive, but when you look at bringing traditionally underutilized infrastructure into use, there’s a huge opportunity there.

**2:02:35 — Mark Champany (CNS):** While we talk about the commercial airports a lot — SEA, Boeing Field, Paine Field — these general aviation airports play a role even in the solutions we’re looking for: better utilizing them, and enabling greater optimization of the commercial airports by providing facilities that some GA users might want, opening up space at the bigger airports.

**2:03:03 — Brandon Rakes:** I’d even encourage this group, if I may — I know advanced mobility has been talked about — but make sure that when we’re looking at multimodal transportation, advanced air mobility is treated as one of those components, almost separately from traditional aviation, because it’s a new and different opportunity with a lot of growth potential.

**2:03:35 — Member:** Somewhere in the back of my mind — this might have been your idea — there was a piece of property around here that used to be an old coal mine that might be available for a new airport. Am I pipe‑dreaming?

**2:03:52 — Brandon Rakes:** No, you’re in the right place for that discussion. TransAlta Commons, where we are — TransAlta had the coal mine out there, and that was discussed at one point as a possible location. That goes back several years. Good memory; it was a discussion point.

## Structuring the work: subcommittees and the annual report

**2:04:26 — Nordby:** Back on the agenda — this was meant to be discussion time. We laid out generally what we’ll be looking to do, at least from a resource standpoint. We can also further the discussion of the annual report, because we don’t want to wait until the last minute. I’m thinking about what the process would be to get something on paper and get the work group to react to it.

**2:05:10 — Mark Champany (CNS):** So you had the idea of a subcommittee focused on the annual report. What were the other subcommittee thoughts?

**2:05:20 — Nordby:** One to talk about system engagement — surface transport access solutions — because we might get into really technical detail, like what the alignment should be, whether it’s near this airport, whether it requires a shuttle, whether that location is practical. If we cogitate on that in a committee and report back, we still get the benefit of the discussion but narrow it a little so it doesn’t become all‑consuming. Same with the annual report — we could get some things on paper, and based on the conversations get it narrowed to something to share with the work group at the next meeting.

**2:06:15 — Consultant:** Ideally we’d get guidance on the annual report, then turn around a draft to that committee two or three weeks after, and you give us comments back. Then it comes to this group for a report‑out and discussion — a first reading in committee and a second reading in the full CAWG, so to speak. But they’re meant for you to decide; we don’t want to dictate. We have the resources to manage three of them. You mentioned three — so if you had a third thought, what was that?

**2:06:57 — Nordby:** Maybe the policy and regulatory piece around operating as a system.

**2:07:03 — Consultant:** So that would be the annual report, intermodal, and the system. Okay.

**2:07:18 — Nordby:** I was trying to think of other priorities the group has expressed — others, chime in. If we had an annual report committee and two other subcommittees, or if we have more than two priorities, we just divide them between two subcommittees and let members work accordingly.

**2:07:55 — Member:** They don’t need to be standing, either — we can create them as we need them.

**2:08:01 — Consultant:** And change them. Once the annual report’s done, we could do something else with that committee.

**2:08:13 — Nordby:** We’ve had a little discussion this morning about multimodal planning that would address the air service capacity issue. So I wonder if that might be a subcommittee people would be interested in — looking at multimodal issues and developing additional planning the state could do in the multimodal area.

**2:08:58 — Member:** Getting back to the beginning of when we started the design, we were looking for the report — the legislative study on regional design was a big one, so making sure we’re interconnected. Do we have some sort of timeline? Our draft report is October, and it’s mid‑July now, so we’re leading up to that first marker. With these committees, when do they start, when’s the breakout, and then our first report draft in October, because it’s due in December?

**2:09:31 — Consultant:** The timeline for the annual report would be quick — probably next month, between the next meeting, as Steve laid out. Some of this continues beyond that. We might mention in the annual report that we’ve set up what we’re doing and what we’ve accomplished, and that we’re going to look at the system design study.

**2:10:10 — Steve (consultant):** We’re still focused on what capacity enhancements are possible or being made at the airports, getting to that management and optimization. Then these were the next four, with Peter’s number two being the legal and regulatory options on system management. You can see the other three we’ll be teeing up, and some coordination to do with you on the economic impact of not addressing demand in the medium to long term. These aren’t necessarily the committees — they’re what we’ve identified as resources to help the work group.

**2:10:57 — Member:** Do you think you’d have that economic effect of not meeting demand in time for this annual report?

**2:11:04 — Steve (consultant):** No — because we still have work to do about what demand we can’t meet, and then we have to value it. There’s an ordering to this. But next year’s, for sure.

**2:11:35 — Nordby:** I see this as a question to ask: what are the concrete things we can put in now, for the legislature to act on now, that we know would fund or make possible specific improvements in the short term? Whether that’s actual direct improvements to airports, or multimodal, or things where the planning process is going on now — where if we don’t influence it now, it’s never going to happen. Like making sure the station at Paine Field is close to the terminal. If Sound Transit makes that decision and that ship has sailed — the train has left the station, better metaphor — then we’ve missed our chance. And some of these regulatory changes on system planning, where they could pass a law enabling it, and then we could make recommendations on how to use the new law down the road. That’s how I see this — well, it would be our third annual report, but the first expanded annual report.

**2:13:08 — Consultant:** We put in the last recommendation about Paine Field and Sound Transit, and the funding did pass recently, so that’s something we accomplished.

**2:13:23 — Member:** Those are good. But I don’t think they’ve picked the location, have they?

**2:13:28 — Consultant:** The funding was part of it, and they did approve the site.

**2:13:35 — Consultant:** You’ve also had prior discussions about the location of high‑speed rail, and how it could benefit SEA if properly positioned. But if you’re going to have a station at Tukwila with a moving sidewalk to SEA — that’s not going to work. World’s longest.

## Sustainable aviation fuel, AAM, and the “airport of the future”

**2:14:10 — Member:** Rich — I saw the governor came out to Moses Lake to open a sustainable aviation fuel facility recently. Twelve is the name of the group doing that.

**2:14:25 — Rich Mueller:** It’s not on the airport, but the Port of Moses Lake was helpful in getting them established here in Washington. They’re working with Alaska Airlines.

**2:14:36 — Steve (consultant):** I do think there’s something along those lines — furthering the development of SAF production in the Pacific Northwest — that could be part of the annual report: encourage the state to continue to incentivize that, because industrywide it needs that. And it speaks to some of the health and environmental aspects of how we can do better while still having a lot of demand.

**2:15:14 — Steve (consultant):** I think that, and what we heard about AAM and UAS, all fall into airport and aviation, or other modes of the future — all ripe to include. With the islands, some of the short‑haul flying, and the noise and environmental sensitivity of burning kerosene in aircraft, imagine replacing a lot of those island flights with eVTOLs and ferries. Those are fair game. They’re not that concrete, but they’re still recommendations this work group is recognizing as important, and they need funding. They’re at various levels of maturity — UAS/drones are pretty much here and developing, eVTOL is a bit more downstream, but a lot of states right now are prioritizing them and the electric infrastructure to accommodate them.

**2:16:27 — Member:** The timing is right, because this last year there was an executive order, and Washington State was selected as one of the multi‑state collaborative applications. So it fits well to keep that momentum going. Hopefully we’ll see a demonstration of advanced air mobility publicly at some point. We do have operators interested — as soon as they can — in buying eVTOLs to serve the islands.

**2:17:01 — Member:** Or hybrid electric. There’s a lot of variance on the theme.

**2:17:13 — Member:** I’ve put a link in the chat — I know it’s not accessible to everybody — to a report from a national laboratory titled “An Overview of Potential Future Aviation Energy Carriers.” I found it useful and commend it to you.

## Master plans, community engagement, and system integration

**2:18:00 — Member:** How would there be a section talking about — Brandon, your airport and others have done a great job incorporating a community factor, inside and outside the fence. How would that look in the report?

**2:18:21 — Consultant:** I’d turn it back to you all. How do you want to do it?

**2:18:25 — Nordby:** I’ve been thinking about this. One advantage of looking at the existing airport master plans, and the newly revised ones, is that that planning process has already been undertaken by each airport, and they’re all responsive to their local communities — most of them, because they’re owned by a public entity. For Paine Field, that plan — for all the fighting that went into eventually opening commercial service there — has proved popular enough that Snohomish County was willing to put its name on a master plan saying they’ll serve six million passengers a year a few years from now, up from zero. That first zero‑to‑one‑million took 25 years of debate. By looking at master plans that already have that degree of community engagement and buy‑in, and building on that, strikes me as an efficient way of addressing that issue. Where the CAC ran into trouble was identifying sites out there — throwing out ideas where that local political groundwork hadn’t been done at all. You see Olympia now trying to amend their master plan, and there’s a fair amount of community opposition. And you have the community‑input issue with the SAMP.

**2:20:29 — Member:** Is there anything different you would consider in that aspect?

**2:20:34 — Consultant:** Boeing Field just went through their master plan, with a bit of public process. They’re all different in their impact and how they’ve engaged with communities. It might be good to do a comparison between the airports — how they’ve engaged, things like SEPA and NEPA, expansion, the outcomes, pros and cons.

**2:21:06 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** The thing that occurs to you when you read the enabling statute for the CAWG is that there’s a lot in there about site selection. But as we’ve seen, when you get into site selection, it takes all the oxygen out of the room. All these other things you want to talk about — AAM, optimization — won’t be heard if you start with site selection. So the way we’ve ordered this is logical: we get into managing and optimizing, then figure out the economic costs and consequences of meeting or not meeting demand, and then — only then — do we get into “what do we do about it,” and part of that is looking at new sites. But if you haven’t done the legwork up to there, people don’t understand it, and all the other issues you care about get obscured by this huge debate that the community doesn’t want a new airport. So the CAWG has ordered it right and set it up more for success. Probably the last thing we’ll do is site selection — and I mean that both ways.

**2:22:24 — Member:** Interesting — somebody said growth in airports during the 20th century was largely haphazard, and there are high‑profile examples of communities — Montreal, Washington, D.C. — that built white elephants out in the middle of nowhere that are only now being used. I don’t think that big airport in exurban Montreal is even used at all.

**2:22:49 — Member:** No — and there’s a new small second airport in Montreal. So, the perils of not planning.

**2:23:02 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** We need to be a little careful. We need to rely on the airport master plans that have already been prepared. But let’s remember, as Rich and I were talking about earlier, they each had their blinders on. As good as the master plans are, they’re not looking at their neighbor as much. Our job will be to use that as a foundation — use whatever has been prepared already — and use the data to do the additional work that says: given all this, what does it tell us as a region, what does it tell us on a statewide level? That’s the piece of work that hasn’t been done yet.

**2:23:39 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Our recommendation should be that the state continue to get right with the FAA, because the state has a lot more freedom on where to spend. Even if the FAA had the money to allow master‑plan integration, they don’t have a mechanism for it, because they haven’t done it. Whereas the state, if it has the money, has the freedom. But the state has to have the money to have the freedom — a bit of a chicken‑and‑egg problem. The FAA isn’t going to tell the state to do this; the state’s going to have to go to the FAA and say, “We think this is a really good idea.” In the current environment, the FAA will be excited about that, because of the prospect of using these facilities more efficiently. But somebody has to take the lead, and that really has to start with the CAWG and move to the state. Stephen and Mark may have different views, but I think the FAA will be very excited about the prospect of funding a statewide integration — a statewide *system*. And I didn’t say system plan; I said system. There’ll be a lot of enthusiasm for it if the state gets out in front.

**2:25:11 — Member:** That’s a very specific thing we can ask the state legislature to do. Is it possible to have that kind of system while retaining the existing local ownership and planning?

**2:25:23 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** I wish you hadn’t asked. What answer do you want? It’s a continuum — between coordination and integration and everything in between. There are different models, and it’ll be our job to say what the differences are and what they mean legally and regulatorily. At one extreme, the state takes over all airports. We’ve seen that in a couple of states in the last couple of months, and it’s been — to be polite — extraordinarily controversial.

**2:25:56 — Member:** And that was done for efficiency reasons — any state can run all the airports for $20 million.

**2:26:04 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** Exactly. So I don’t think that’s really on the table. The question is: what role does the state play right now? With no disrespect to DOT, the role is relatively modest. So what’s the state’s role going forward? Maybe it’s spending $20 million. Or $40 million — how much do you have? But it’s also using state resources and influence to force, encourage, incentivize all the airports in the state to do what’s right. The FAA has a lot of tools for that — they’ve been very good at telling airports what to do without telling them what to do. The state could use that model.

**2:27:00 — Member:** Could we have the FAA in as a guest — their government affairs? They know what the rules are right now. Somebody’s got to change the rules. If you ask them, they’ll say, “Whatever you want to do is fine.”

**2:27:34 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** “We’re not going to fund it, we’re not going to help you, we’re not going to encourage it.” Somebody needs to take the initiative. If you say to the FAA, “Here’s the plan the state wants to move forward with, and here’s how we’ll get there,” having them react to that would be very productive. But — and I say this from experience — the FAA has limited funds, limited people, and limited ability to look outside the box, and what we’re talking about is pretty far outside the box.

**2:28:06 — Member:** Tell me if your experience is wrong, but I think we’re dealing with an agency that has to stay within its authority, and we’re asking them to do something they’ve never done before.

**2:28:15 — Consultant:** At least our experience is more at the DOT than the FAA — there’s real interest in thinking creatively, but that’s at the highest levels, in Washington, not at the district or regional office.

**2:28:39 — Member:** I’m sure they’d come talk to us, but I agree it’s kind of premature. We’re not there yet.

**2:29:03 — Nordby:** The folks we haven’t heard from today — I see Representative Dent again; Zoom puts people up at random. We were talking about getting suggestions on a format and outline for what you think the legislature would like to see in an annual report. I know that’s still pending, but we’d be very interested in seeing it.

**2:29:38 — Rep. Tom Dent:** I understand. We talked about that at the last meeting, and I didn’t drop the ball — I passed it on, but somewhere along the pathway the ball got dropped, and I’ve started it rolling again this morning because I realized it had been dropped. I’ll do what I can to get those answers as soon as I can. In the meantime, you’re doing good. Don’t worry — I think all is well. I appreciate your hard work; you’re really engaged. Although I’ve had my camera off, I’ve been listening and paying attention.

## Committee structure, the funding cliff, and the vetoed bill

**2:30:19 — Nordby:** I haven’t heard anybody say anything bad about the idea of subcommittees. We have more ideas for subcommittees than we have spots — if we have an annual report subcommittee and two others. I’m trying to help you all decide: do we want to go ahead with subcommittees, who wants to be on what, and what should they be — what subjects, and how should we break them down?

**2:31:09 — Member:** Can I make a suggestion? Bringing the theme of the committees up a level: annual report — leave that as is. Another could be infrastructure — airport infrastructure, rail infrastructure — with people interested in that; maybe we hop on the multimodal issue first. And a third could be governance and regulatory — the system type — some governance, some examples of other systems. The committees can move their own agendas.

**2:32:02 — Mark Champany (CNS):** What we could do is take one meeting and come back to you with — if those are the three — a suggested agenda for each committee. You share it, and people who have an interest take that as a first cut; if we need to rearrange, or ask people to serve on another, you can do that. Doing it today is probably a little premature. We can make some suggestions and come back with information — you could even share it before our next meeting rather than wait two months.

**2:32:45 — Member:** A document or outline of these committees, so we could decide among ourselves.

**2:32:51 — Mark Champany (CNS):** We can do that in the next couple of weeks easily. Why don’t we do that?

**2:32:56 — Member:** I’m a little afraid of subcommittees. I was having a hard time hearing — I heard infrastructure and governmental/regulatory. What was the second?

**2:33:06 — Member:** Those were the two, and the third is the annual report.

**2:33:12 — Ben Brookman:** We can take this offline when we discuss the specific committees, but I wonder if there’s room for something related to the demand profile as well — travel demand. We solve infrastructure through supply, and regulatory focuses on the how, but there’s an upstream component: the total passenger demand we see in the region. We’ve talked about that with the consultants and got great information — might that be a good thing for a committee to focus on?

**2:33:50 — Consultant:** Absolutely. And one of the things you mentioned, Mark — we’ve got budget for three subcommittees, but they don’t all have to be all the time. One can finish its work, and once the annual report’s done, that could morph into the demand profile.

**2:34:09 — Nordby:** Why don’t we do a charge for all four and come back? We’ll get those to you, and you can decide what to prioritize. Ben, I love that idea.

**2:34:22 — Nordby:** Now that you’ve got an idea for four, Steve, I want to throw out another one. I apologize — this is sort of bureaucracy — but this annual report goes to the legislature, which meets in January, and they’ll have to allocate a new round of funding. This group continues to exist, but there’s no more funding after June 30, 2027. So we might want a subcommittee to scope out what we’re going to do after that, so you can tell us how much it’ll cost, and we can ask for it.

**2:35:10 — Consultant:** Just to get into the details of how this works: it’s outside of WSDOT’s budget. The CAWG is your own entity, so it won’t be me asking for this budget — it’ll be you all.

**2:35:21 — Member:** So is this something we should mention in our annual report?

**2:35:34 — Consultant:** It could be in there — at least alert them that we’ll need funding beyond June.

**2:35:43 — Member:** Continue to exist. We’re doing good work; we’re not done yet.

**2:35:57 — Consultant:** We’ll gladly take that. And I think that might be one of those places where input from Representative Dent could be useful — how best to shape that up. Dent has a hand raised.

**2:36:17 — Rep. Tom Dent:** Thank you. To go along with Ann’s comments — the original bill we had for this committee, about half of it was vetoed by the past governor. So if we’re looking for further funding, do we want to look at — and I don’t need an answer today — whether you’d like to change the direction of the committee a little, so you could have more input into what the issue is here. You could look at the bill we had — pull it up, see what was vetoed, and see if it’s something you’d like to continue with. Just let me know your thoughts, because if we’re going to reach back and try to get more funding, and if we need to change the policy a little, we can work on that too.

**2:37:19 — Nordby:** That’s our chance to bring in maybe some other multimodal representation or a work group.

**2:37:37 — Rep. Tom Dent:** It’s going to come back to us on committee ideas. Just know that I have 146 other legislators I work with, so I can’t promise anything, but we can ask.

**2:38:01 — Nordby:** Is there anything else? I know the regional design was really important to one of the representatives. Is there one area important to you that you haven’t seen in the past and would like to see moving forward?

**2:38:24 — Rep. Tom Dent:** [Representative] Fey and I wrote that bill together, and much of what I put in there was taken out. If you reach back and look at the bill — I’m just trying to have an overall view so we can come up with some answers. If we don’t start finding a direction pretty soon, we’re going to regret that in a big way in the state of Washington. I could have my LA pull up this bill the way it was before the governor vetoed part of it, and you can have a look. Just let me know what you think — I want your opinion on where we’re going. You’re really in the trenches doing this, and I appreciate your work. Let me know what you think and we can talk later.

## Back to the capacity gap: the next round of master plans

**2:39:32 — Nordby:** This is changing the subject from the committee structure, which makes sense and we should keep refining. But our discussion here was also still titled “the capacity gap.” We’re anticipating these lines into the future of travel demand — focusing on passengers per year — and plans in the pipeline for capacity improvements that get up to a point, and then there’s the gap. I think we need to start thinking about where, or who, we encourage to think about what they’ll put in their next master plan to start filling that gap. We have the existing rounds of master plans; they go out a certain period. Our planning timeline goes a bit beyond that. Do some of the airports we’ve mentioned already have in mind what they’ll put in their next master plan? And can we get them to share that, so we can start thinking about that 2040–2050–2055 period? If some of the system things move forward, some of those might change, based on what you can do first versus what you can’t do now.

**2:41:50 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** I think the way we’re talking, we have to go first. We — meaning the CAWG — have to go first. The CAWG has to say: here are the existing master plans, here are the problems we see on a systemwide basis that need to be solved, and, individual airports, please look at this as you begin your next master plan — because that’s when the blinders come off, essentially, because we’re the only ones who hopefully have the authority and the direction to take those blinders off. SAMP is a wonderful document — thank you very much for SAMP — but SAMP 2 will be informed, we hope, by what the CAWG finds at the end of our existence, or whatever annual report we’ve done.

And we shouldn’t be too arrogant about this, either. Twenty‑six years ago, if we had described the problem in the state of Washington with capacity, using the data we had then, we would have it very wrong today. So as we look 26 years into the future, if we presume that addressing today’s problem will meet the needs of the future, we’re likewise probably going to be wrong. Part of what we want to think about is the timings, the off‑ramps, and the flexibilities within the system that we can respond to dynamically.

**2:43:14 — Member:** But are we going to be wrong low, or wrong high? Looking 26 years back —

**2:43:22 — Peter Kirsch (consultant):** We would have built many more runways, put in a lot more air traffic control towers, and had completely inadequate terminals and landside infrastructure — and we would have ignored all road access and all light rail access.

**2:43:40 — Steve (consultant):** So those weren’t important then. It’s important to keep an eye on the future — how aviation, and even in our scope “the airport of the future,” is likely to change, but also how airports can respond to dynamic changes in aviation. Part of our job is to engage in a mind‑shift, so that when airports prepare their next master plan, they’re thinking in system terms. We’ll be wrong whatever we predict 30–40 years hence, but if each individual airport looks at the problem the way we’re recommending, they’ll do better — and get funding for it — and at the same time look at those other modes’ master plans and bring them in simultaneously, so the airport and transit operators can tweak their strategy to maximize the benefits. They’re all having their own issues — vehicle miles traveled changing on roads, transit ridership in many areas collapsing.

**2:44:57 — Member:** But not here.

**2:45:03 — Steve (consultant):** I’m just saying — those are moving targets as well. So we’re really coring a bunch of moving targets, and it gets wronger and wronger the longer you look. So focusing on the system, as Peter says — how we put these pieces together and work together — is actually more important than saying what we think it’s going to look like and what set of 10 measures will get us there.

## Telling the story: industries, freight, and cherries

**2:45:33 — Ann Richart:** As we move forward, I really want to have some — Steve, you and I have talked about the vision of the do‑nothing scenario. Maybe this is my own shortcoming, but it’s not super helpful to me to have charts, data, and graphs. I want to know: what does that look like to a real person? One thing that concerns me: of the appointees to the work group, several unfilled positions are the economic development representatives. So I’d like to see, beyond the graphs — like Ben mentioned, demand — what does that mean, really? If the cruise industry can’t get their passengers into SEA, what does that mean to them, or to the professional sports industry in Seattle? I’d like to hear from some of the other Puget Sound‑based industries what it would mean to them if there are constraints on air travel. I think that would help tell the story. I don’t know if that’s something we put in the next request the legislature funds to study, or if it’s part of your work plan in the next six months, but those are pieces I’d like to see.

**2:47:19 — Steve (consultant):** If I can give you an example: the Yakima Valley ships I don’t know how many millions of pounds of cherries out of SEA every year. If they can’t do that, what’s the impact? The Washington State Fruit Tree Commission, based in Yakima, could probably help. They’re not on our current list of attendees, but they might have something to say. They ship, and it all comes over I‑90 on trucks. Alan, you might know more about that than I do, but it’s a lot — over the mountains on trucks, and then it gets on airplanes.

**2:48:07 — Member:** They ship at SEA, to Asia — Korea, Japan, China.

**2:48:13 — Rich Mueller:** We did that. We don’t have the one company that was on the airfield willing to do that work anymore — it’s not there. I agree with what Steve said: we don’t have a freight component here. We need a freight forwarder to talk about what it would take to bring a team over to Grant County for six weeks a year, and what Grant County would need to build to house that facility — because we were bringing cherries from north of us down to the airport and flying them to Asia. We could easily do the same for freight coming from Chelan and Wenatchee, because they don’t have airports to ship out of. In Yakima there’s fruit packing right in town and an airport, so it would be relatively easy.

**2:49:04 — Member:** That’s something for their master plan, because — talking to the freight forwarders — the runway has to be 12,000 feet long and 150 feet wide if they’re going to use that, and that’s not Yakima yet.

**2:49:14 — Steve (consultant):** One thing you could try, Ann: when we meet next, figure out who a local shipper or economic interest is that we can have come speak to the group and get that anecdotal information. It’s pretty easy to value — delays, congestion, longer hauls, or lack of reliability is something we can put a number to. So I’m not worried about that.

**2:49:45 — Member:** A cargo or multimodal question — if we put it in a committee, would it be freight?

**2:49:52 — Consultant:** It’s probably multimodal, because you have to get it to the airport. And passengers and freight can be valued similarly in terms of the effect on delays and congestion.

**2:50:07 — Member:** Is it belly freight? Some of that’s full airplanes, some going underneath.

**2:50:17 — Member:** I saw fresh Washington cherries in a farmers market in Taichung last week. [Laughter.] Did you buy some?

**2:50:27 — Member:** Do we have a committee, or what category, for biofuels and hydrogen to go into the report?

**2:50:40 — Consultant:** It could be in the infrastructure piece, because it takes infrastructure to produce it.

**2:51:01 — Gary Wirt:** Alan and I could do a little research about a freight forwarder we might invite, or some of the people who ship fruit — don’t you think, Alan?

**2:51:17 — Alan Adolf:** There’s people right there in town we could contact, but the first thing that comes to my mind is the Washington State Fruit Tree Commission — though there are probably others.

**2:51:32 — Member:** Would the Commerce Department have folks they’d recommend?

**2:51:44 — Steven Pollinsky (Commerce):** We’d be happy to assist with that.

**2:51:52 — Member:** That freight group — that had to have been seven years ago now. There were freight forwarders that were part of it. Might be worth pulling.

**2:52:11 — Member:** I remember you told us on the tour — why did they cease operating the tree‑fruit operation at your airport?

**2:52:20 — Rich Mueller:** Ultimately, the company doing that closed, but it was off to a great start. The economic friction between China and the U.S. had a great deal to do with it, and there were some weather issues — both here and in California — because they were in direct competition; getting the best‑looking cherries there first is the name of the game. But there’s branding — this is where having the Tree Fruit Commission there matters. A Washington State cherry means something to those markets in Asia; there’s a little cache, and that’s to our advantage. The other question, if we could bring them here: it’s got to be a high‑dollar perishable fruit. Cherries clearly work now. What’s the next fruit worth their while to ship by air — apricots, blueberries, something else? I’d be curious what the growers think will be a high‑value crop going forward, because if we get an idea of what that is, and the volumes, then we add that to the cherries and now we have another problem — opportunity — to solve.

**2:54:06 — Member:** DOT was talking about I‑90 and needing it built for wine exports. Depending on how those get to SEA — I don’t think they’re going on a cargo ship — and that’s far more perishable than the average person would think. That was our advantage: the fruit would stay refrigerated except for literally half a minute between the truck and the dock, and about two minutes between the dock and the airplane. In some places it sits outside for a bit, and every minute counts.

**2:54:49 — Gary Wirt:** In the case of some of these fruits, like apples and pears, you can send them by boat because they’re not as perishable. But cherries — it’s just a matter of three or four days, and they’re gone if they’re not shipped.

**2:55:01 — Member:** Thank you, Gary — that’s what I was wondering. The second‑largest wine‑producing state is Washington. Does wine get shipped by air? Is that another big industry? It’s heavy.

**2:55:18 — Member:** I doubt it, but I don’t know. So that goes on boats too — reefer containers. The conversation was several years ago; I don’t recall exactly, but I think it wasn’t a cargo ship — because they were talking time‑sensitive, and two weeks across the Pacific isn’t time‑sensitive. It was the timing to get from Eastern Washington to the ports — whether SEA or boats — that mattered, to get to Seattle and off to the Pacific Rim.

**2:56:18 — Member:** Egg industry representation, as compared to just freight or freight‑forwarder.

**2:56:25 — Nordby:** Seafood — you make a good point. Fresh, perishable, high‑value, grown or harvested in Washington. Hopefully we can get an industry representative. Steve — do you happen to know if any of the pending nominations with the governor’s office are from industry people?

**2:56:56 — Member:** No, not right off. Some are non‑voting. Let me take a look — I’ve got my list here. Trucking industry and freight forwarding — those are both voting positions. I don’t know if we have any nominees, but there’s nothing specific about agriculture.

**2:57:50 — Member:** There’s nothing that prevents us from having those people come and speak to us anyway, whether they’re a member or not.

**2:58:16 — Member:** So we could invite somebody from the fruit tree industry to talk about how they get cherries over there now, how many, and whether they’re currently experiencing challenges.

**2:58:41 — Member:** So who has the action on that?

**2:58:47 — Member:** Carol Austin, for the growers — a food coalition on organic regenerative agriculture. It’d be good to have a rep that represents shippers generally, because tech, for instance, is a far bigger user of air cargo than agriculture. Agriculture is usually high‑weight, low‑value; air cargo — cherries notwithstanding — is generally lightweight, high‑value. So we need representatives of all of it.

**2:59:25 — Steve (consultant):** I think it’ll be more natural maybe two meetings from now, when we get to capacity — then what do you do about it, and what are the constraints — and then you have those folks who can speak to what they need under a constrained system. So we have a little time, but getting a rep on it would be pretty important.

**2:59:54 — Steven Pollinsky (Commerce):** Many years ago, when I was in the state of Oregon, one of the big air‑freight things then was the Nike products — same thing, high value, low weight. I don’t know if we’ve got that kind of manufacturing.

**3:00:19 — Member:** Intuitively — I was just in Taiwan; there are four non‑stop flights a day, on three different carriers, between SEA and Taipei. Intuition tells me it’s semiconductors coming one way and cherries going the other, and the passengers are basically along for the ride.

## Scheduling the next meetings

**3:00:59 — Nordby:** Are we good on dates, times, and places for the next one? We haven’t picked yet.

**3:01:13 — Mark Champany (CNS):** We’re going to come back to the work group with a structure of potential committees, and in the next couple of weeks the work group will pick.

**3:01:28 — Member:** Ben, you might have some input — I don’t know how much you can share from the airline, but when you’re doing route planning and looking at the cargo aspect. That might be too trade‑secrety for us.

**3:01:43 — Ben Brookman:** It’s not terribly secret. Cargo has a much larger impact on the international side generally; for us in the lower 48 it’s supplemental, so it’s nice to have. With our State of Alaska operations, it’s critical — the lifeblood of communities there, and in Hawaii — so it varies by market. The majority of the volume we carry is mail, fish, essential goods to and from Alaska, plus packages and e‑commerce. I was just texting with Ann a moment ago — one potential agenda item for the next working group: our vice president of planning and revenue management would be willing to come and talk in more detail. I’ve done it in the past, but she’s the current head of the division. She oversees revenue management and pricing, as well as network planning — all the route forecasting, and how we think about cargo revenue. If that would be of interest, we can get that on the calendar.

**3:03:00 — Member:** That would be fascinating.

**3:03:17 — Nordby:** We still have 45 minutes, and I’ve asked all my questions for the moment. I did put some next dates and considerations for the next couple of meetings — let’s talk about that, and location.

**3:04:11 — Mark Champany (CNS):** The next meeting doesn’t have to be all virtual, but in the summer — you did an all‑virtual one last time. This one got pushed a bit because of holidays and vacations. Out of these four, we’d pick the next two. For the near one, if we’re going to have people come present, I’d rather that be in person; a virtual meeting is fine for getting everybody up to date and organizing the committees, but if we’re going to have the fruit people, or Alaska, or semiconductors, I’d prefer to sit around a table.

*(Extended date‑juggling around conflicts — Labor Day week, a Washington airports conference, the Washington State Transportation Commission meeting in Yakima on Oct. 14–15, Columbus Day, and a member’s mother’s 99th birthday on Oct. 13.)*

**3:13:32 — Member:** So: virtual on September 3rd, and Spokane on October 7th.

**3:13:38 — Mark Champany (CNS):** September 3rd will be virtual — not a six‑hour meeting; we’ll estimate the agenda times, but definitely something shorter, probably 10 to 1. Then we go to our standard agenda for October 7th, 10 to 4.

**3:14:29 — Nordby:** [To Spokane‑area member] Will you take the lead on seeing whether they’re available and what the best location would be for October 7th?

**3:15:13 — Nordby:** Meanwhile, you all will get us information about the committee work, and we’ll share that before the 3rd, with the expectation that we’ll come out of that meeting with folks assigned to committees and an agenda to move forward. For Spokane on the 7th, we’d want to finalize the annual report — so the committees and the annual report discussion on the 3rd, maybe even a draft to react to, and then final draft form for October 7th, getting the work group to agree to it.

**3:16:27 — Member:** Another group for feedback is the Northwest Seaport Alliance — a collaboration of the Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma. We do have a ports representative — Buck Taft.

**3:17:21 — Nordby:** Well, if we’re done a bit early — Brandon, are we able to roll into the tour?

**3:17:30 — Brandon Rakes:** We gave them a heads‑up; should be ready in about three [minutes]. I’ll update.

**3:17:45 — Nordby:** Anything else anyone wants to add while we’re still on the record?

**3:17:51 — Member:** A thought for a future meeting — a field trip to the Portland airport, just to see the new terminal and how it compares. We could meet in Vancouver, Washington — then we’re in the state of Washington — and go across the river to tour PDX, just not during rush hour. That would be a good winter meeting location, because the Eastern folks could go south and not have to cross the pass.

**3:18:28 — Member:** If you haven’t been in the new terminal at PDX, it’s fantastic. And the Vancouver, Washington airport will have a brand‑new conference room that might be available to us — a cool small‑airport December meeting location.

**3:18:55 — Member:** Anyone in the Seattle area can take one of the six Amtrak Cascades trains to Vancouver, round trip. Pretty convenient — don’t have to drive I‑5, and you can do some work. I took the train here today, and I’m taking it back tonight. I just heard a presentation on PDX 2045, so between a tour and that, they’d be very happy to talk to this group.

**3:19:43 — Member:** If you go to Portland, Ben could probably give us information about what Alaska is doing down there — increasing gate capacity and so on.

**3:19:55 — Member:** That might be the time to have his route‑management person address the group.

**3:20:03 — Nordby:** Ben, maybe that December meeting would be the time to have your planning and route‑management person speak.

**3:20:11 — Ben Brookman:** Sounds good. I’ll work with the team to make sure she’s on the calendar.

**3:20:26 — Member:** Can you summarize the dates, times, and places for the future meetings?

**3:20:34 — Nordby:** September 3rd — virtual. October 7th — Spokane. December — pending, but let’s talk about it now.

**3:20:48 — Member:** December gets tight. Second or the ninth?

**3:21:08 — Members:** December 2nd works. All right — December 2nd, and we’ll see about meeting in Vancouver, Washington.

**3:21:35 — Member:** So: December 2nd and October 7th would be the normal 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and September 3rd, block 10 to 1 — that should be plenty.

**3:22:05 — Nordby:** Anything else? Okay — hearing nothing, let’s adjourn and move on to our airport tour.

**3:22:12 — Member:** Thank you. Good conversation.

*(Meeting adjourned; airport tour to follow.)*

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