The Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASD) is a federal grant program which seeks to increase air service to small communities across the country. It’s silly and often a waste, but the yearly SCASD grant applications make for some interesting reading.

Now you’d think that Charlotte would come up often in such applications, as it’s a huge hub and there are a fair number of smaller cities that are reasonably close that lack air service to CLT. (A list of places within 1200 miles without nonstop to CLT as of 2Q2010 is here — Des Moines and Omaha got CLT flights this past March.) So how many of the 70 or so SCADS applications submitted last year wanted to add air service to Charlotte? Exactly zero.

The CLT does get mentioned in two of this year’s applications though: Lafayette, LA (LFT) and Burlington, VT (BTV).

Lafayette first, because we can all use a good laugh. After talking about wanting money to market existing flights out of the city (reduce leakage to other airports), we get to “Another
objective of these meetings will be discussions about the possibility of the current air carriers to offer non-stop service to other major hubs, such as Charlotte, Newark, Washington D.C., and Las Vegas.” US Airways doesn’t currently fly to Lafayette — what the city is hoping for is that American, United, or Delta, which all currently fly there, will add LFT-CLT. Right…

It gets better than that though. Why don’t they simply try to recruit US Airways? Because there literally is no room for additional airlines there: “Currently, there are no gates available for additional carriers to be added to LFT. There is parking space for five aircraft, and currently, there are five aircraft that arrive beginning at 20:01 and are stationed overnight at LFT.” There’s also no room for ticket counters for a new airline and “restrooms inside the sterile area are undersized to accommodate current passenger levels.”

Lovely. But the airport has hired a consultant “to begin addressing the future needs of the airport with a preliminary study necessary to plan for the future.”

Moving on to the coherent, there’s Burlington’s application:

Burlington International Airport (BTV) is proposing a Small Community Air Service Development Grant in the amount of $450,000 to supplement a community-based cash contribution of $45,000, airport cash contribution of $50,000 and airport in-kind incentives valued at $85,593. The goal of such a proposal is to provide both a minimum, short term (12 to 18 month) revenue guarantee program as well as a marketing program aimed specifically at the proposed new air service to either Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) on Delta Airlines (or regional affiliate) or Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) on US Airways (or regional affiliate).

Including airports in New England and New York, BTV is currently the largest airport without non-stop service to ATL or CLT. Such a service would provide Burlington and the Northern New England region with non-stop air service to cities which already have a large base of local traffic, as well as providing connecting opportunities to cities in the Southeastern United States, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Burlington is one of the largest unserved markets from Charlotte. It’s also the only one of the top 12 unserved markets within 1,200 miles that US Airways flies to from one (or more) of its other hubs. Both Delta and US Airways provided letters supporting Burlington’s application. So perhaps is we’ll soon have have flights to BTV, which is in any case the most obvious exception to the window for US Airways expanding domestically closing now that the slot swap with Delta is complete.

You can download this year’s applications by going here and searching for “OST-2012-0069”

Bonus observation: Grand Rapids, MI is the largest unserved market within 1,200 miles from CLT. US Airways had been talking to them about adding service to Washington Reagan National (DCA) as part of the slot swap with service to Charlotte and/or Philadelphia also likely bundled in. the airline did not include the city when it announced its new flights to DCA. The lack of a SCASD application by Grand Rapis, MI further suggests that US Airways wouldn’t be adding flights to there.