With high winds blowing across Whidbey Island some travelers trying to make it to Seattle-Tacoma Airport are faced with a number of challenges.

What if the new air service between Oak Harbor and Seattle is canceled due to weather? Can people rely on the Sea-Tac Shuttle? What if the ferry can’t cross the Sound due to stormy conditions?

The Sea-Tac Shuttle makes seven runs a day with prices ranging from $31 to $36 one way. And Kenmore Air Express offers rates between $29 and $49 one way and also flies multiple trips daily.

“We have been tracking our flight completion rate,” said Kenmore Air marketing director Craig O’Neill. The airline canceled fewer than five percent of our Oak Harbor flights due to weather.

Five percent translates to about four canceled one-way flights a week, he said.

“We don’t anticipate this number getting any worse, because the weather this month has been as bad as it’s ever likely to get. January and February actually tend to be less weather-intensive,” O’Neill said.

If the airline anticipates cancellations based on the weather, representatives will call passengers as much as 10 hours in advance of flight time. At that time, passengers have the option of canceling their reservation without penalty if they choose to find alternate means of travel.

If passengers keep their reservation and the airline can’t lift off, the airlines will provide ground transportation to Seattle, either on its own shuttle or on a contracted carrier.

“When possible, we have our ground shuttles depart earlier than scheduled in order to get passengers to Seattle as close to the scheduled arrival time as possible. However, if we are unable to contact all passengers or cannot get all passengers to agree to depart early, then we depart at the scheduled departure time. In no event will we strand a booked passenger without any means to complete their journey,” O’Neill said. “We’re committed to getting our passengers to their destinations by other means. Suggestions by our competitors that our service is unreliable simply are not borne out by the facts.”

And with 55-minute travel times from Oak Harbor to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Kenmore offers the fastest service to the mainland.

Challenging weather conditions have required the company to make use of alternate airports.

There are occasions when weather limits operation at Oak Harbor Airport but permits it into either Naval Air Station Whidbey Island or Skagit Regional Airport in Burlington. Those situations often have to do with crosswinds that are too strong to permit safe landings on Oak Harbor’s east-west runway but that can be handled on the differently-oriented runways at the other two airports.

“Because of the nature of the instrument landing procedures available, both NASWI and Skagit allow safe operation with lower cloud ceilings than at Oak Harbor. So, in these situations, we will operate from the air station or Skagit and provide our passengers van transportation to or from Oak Harbor,” O’Neill said.

The airline further added to its reliability by recently getting FAA approval for their night approaches.

The FAA announced on

Nov. 12 its approval of nighttime instrument approach procedures at the Oak Harbor Airport.

The procedures, which allow pilots to safely land at the airport when poor weather precludes operation under normal flight rules, had previously been restricted to daylight-only use.

The daytime instrument procedures were first approved in

May 2006 at the request of Kenmore Air Express. Removal of the night restrictions also required further investments in airport infrastructure by the airline.

“Getting the FAA to re-certify the instrument approach at Oak Harbor has been an expensive, time-consuming process,” said Kenmore Air Express chief pilot Capt. Pete Brady.

“With the removal of the night restriction, we can finally check this project fully off our list. Oak Harbor is now served with a fully functional, day-and-night instrument approach option, as it should be,” Brady said.

Of the 89 flights Kenmore Air Express offers weekly between Seattle and Oak Harbor this time of year, 25 of them happen in the dark hours.

The instrument approach into Oak Harbor allows safe landings whenever the cloud ceiling is at least 471 feet above the ground and the horizontal visibility is at least one mile. The minimums allow safe, reliable operations in and out of the airport in all but the very worst weather.