Our View: Results are in: Fly us to Medford

One of the new features of the triplicate.com Web site is a weekly poll. While the results are far from scientific, they do provide a glimpse of reader sentiment.

A recent poll found far stronger support for daily flights between Crescent City and Medford than for a third daily connection between here and San Francisco (this one via Arcata). Poll respondents preferred the Medford alternative by 264-100, or 72.5 percent to 27.5 percent.

Both of those additions are under consideration as SkyWest looks at dropping its under-used Crescent City-Sacramento (via Arcata) connection.

Unfortunately, at this point SkyWest doesn’t seem to be seriously considering adding the Medford connection to its package of three federally subsidized flights per day to and from Crescent City. Instead, airport officials and community leaders are talking about taking up a collection known as a “travel bank” to jump-start a Medford flight.

These “banks” guarantee an airline a minimum return on their investment — the Eureka-Arcata area got its Salt Lake City connections that way. Funding such an effort in this economic environment could be difficult, however. It would be nice if SkyWest acknowledged community sentiment and added Medford instead of another San Francisco connection.

It’s not that a lot of people want to fly just to Medford, since it’s only a two-hour drive from here. But Medford opens up many convenient connections. It offers eight non-stops daily to Portland and two to Seattle. Medford also flies direct to Eugene, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles (as well as San Francisco, but we’ve got that covered from here). And with quick stops in Portland, Medfor is also a reasonable conduit to Spokane and Boise.

As someone who recently flew from Crescent City to Seattle, via San Francisco, I’m certainly aligned with the majority of our poll respondents on the preference for a Medford flight. It’s great having two daily flights between here and San Francisco, but do we really want a third when sometimes our plans call for travel that doesn’t begin with a jaunt of more than 300 miles to the south?

There used to be direct airline service between here and Portland. Now that would be cool. Times have changed, however, and these days tiny markets such as ours are lucky to have airline service at all. Federal subsidies designed to assist remote areas make it possible. It might well be more profitable for SkyWest if that subsidy included the potential for travel in a non-southerly direction.

By the way, for those of you who think it’s always more expensive to fly out of Crescent City, I found a last-minute round-trip fare from here to Seattle for $185.20, taxes and fees included, on the United Web site.

More from the polls

Other recent triplicate.com poll results:

By a 334-85 count, most respondents said they are not willing to pay higher taxes to pull the state government out of its financial crisis.

By a 358-161 count, most respondents oppose physically blocking access to the Crescent City breakwater, where a wave recently swept a physician to his death.

Beacons on local shelves

So much for encouraging readers to shop local. When we reported Thursday that boat owners must convert to digital emergency beacons by Feb. 1, we passed along the Coast Guard’s suggestion of a Web site where the devices can be obtained.

It turns out the digital beacons are also on the shelves down at Englund Marine in Crescent City harbor.