AUBURN — A new $600,000 federal grant could lure a passenger airline carrier to the Twin Cities.

“We started work on a new terminal last month, and hopefully that will be coming online next year,” said Rick Cloutier, manager of the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport. “Hopefully, when it does, we’ll be able to attract an airline.”

The federal Department of Transportation announced the $600,000 grant under the Small Community Air Service Development Program.

“It’s designed to help communities attract or enhance their air service, which is exactly what we’ve been working on the last two to three years. There can be startup costs associated with attracting an airline, as well as marketing and promotional activities. This grant can be used for all of that,” he said.

Cloutier said he planned to meet with the airport’s Board of Directors over the next few weeks to discuss how to use the grant money.

“We’d use this to attract an airline,” he said. “Along with some private funding we have in place, we’d be able to give a carrier some revenue guarantees so passenger service could start to establish itself.”

It’s one of several grants the airport has received during the past year.

In March, the airport received a $542,000 Federal Aviation Administration grant to study the effect expanding the main runway, the north-south oriented Runway 0422, from 5,000 feet to about 6,000 feet. An expansion like that would make the runway safer for current aircraft and allow bigger aircraft to begin using the airport, including passenger airplanes.

Airport traffic has increased as much as 30 percent over the past five years. It includes air shipping and delivery service, as well as corporate traffic. The airport logs 500 trips from corporate airplanes each year, bringing in officials from TD Bank, Procter & Gamble and other national companies with Twin Cities branches, as well as companies considering expanding into Central Maine.

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