PORT ANGELES — Kenmore Air will switch its marketing strategy to entice businesses and governments to fly between Port Angeles and Seattle often after analyzing a 21 percent drop in passengers from 2009 to 2010.

Marketing Manager Craig O’Neill told Port of Port Angeles commissioners at their Monday meeting that while the current strategy was informative, it wasn’t effectively getting people to fly.

“Sorry to come today of all days [St. Valentine’s Day] with a report lacking in sweetness,” O’Neill told the commissioners.

The airline barely scraped by with the required number of enplanements — people boarding planes in Port Angeles to go to Seattle aboard the nine-passenger Cessna Caravans — in 2010.

The airline must have at least 10,000 passengers annually for the William R. Fairchild International Airport to receive up to $1 million in grant funding for airport improvements from the Federal Aviation Administration.

In 2010, Kenmore Air had 10,183 passengers take off from Port Angeles, and 9,036 passengers arrive.

That is a decrease of about 27.5 percent from 2009’s figures, in which 24,513 people either took off or arrived.

In 2009, the Hood Canal Bridge closure gave the airline a boost in business in May and June, which made the gap larger than it would have been, O’Neill said.

“If you don’t take into account the Hood Canal Bridge closure, we were down about 5 percent,” he said.

In May 2009, at the height of the bridge closure, a total of 2,494 people boarded the airline in Port Angeles and in 2010, that number had dropped to 857 — or a decrease of 65.64 percent.

In June 2009, as the east-half bridge replacement project was wrapping up, 1,528 people boarded the planes in Port Angeles. That number dropped 45.81 percent to 828 in 2010.

“Across the company, we saw a decrease of about 8.8 percent, so Port Angeles is actually doing slightly better than the other areas [not taking into account the Hood Canal Bridge closure],” he said.

O’Neill is working on the campaign with Pat McCauley of Sequim’s InsideOut Solutions, a marketing consultant who was hired using a grant to boost ridership on the airline over the next two years.

He said that the current campaign focuses on informing people that it is possible to book flights on Kenmore through Alaska Airlines, thus making it easier to book vacations straight through to a destination besides Seattle.

The plan is to focus on recruiting more businesses and governments to use the airline more consistently, he said.

“Pat and I really committed to each other and to Jeff [Robb, executive director at the Port of Port Angeles,] to really do intensive business and community outreach,” he said.

“We feel like we haven’t burned enough shoe leather so for the remainder of the winter and spring we will really hit it hard.

“We look forward to reporting back about that.”

O’Neill said he and others at the airline had heard complaints about a more restrictive schedule during the fourth quarter of 2010, which he said was as a result of lack of demand.

“We are in a tough spot right now,” he said.

“I would like nothing more than to offer a better flight schedule and I know that with our pricing structure we are pricing out a certain segment of the community — frankly, if I lived here I couldn’t afford it.

“I raise that not asking for sympathy, but to say that we are happy to respond to the demand, but people need to be aware that we are a business that has to make payroll as well.”

Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.