No news is good news in the quest to bring Delta Air Lines to the North Coast.

“Quite frankly, until the revenue guarantee portion is known, we probably won’t see a service announcement,” Madelin Holtkamp said Monday. “We’re still kind of in a wait and see mode.”

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors decides Jan. 8 if it will approve the recommendation made two weeks ago to commit $500,000 from the Headwaters Fund to back the revenue guarantee.

That approval is the final pice of a four-part incentive package sent off to Delta Dec. 26.

Community meetings in early December targeted Dec. 31 for a service agreement announcement.

“Everybody including Delta understands that government has its processes in terms of open meetings and proper notices,” Holtkamp said. “There’s no question they want to come into this market if they’re convinced enough people would support it and make it successful. The revenue guarantee is a big portion of the incentive package.”

The $500,000 is a one-year cushion to support Delta whenever revenues fall below a certain negotiated floor level.

“If the flights hit 65 or 66 percent occupancy, that’s the breakeven point,” Holtkamp said. “If they make less than the floor amount, the revenue guarantee brings them up to it.”

Delta is considering two flights daily from Arcata-Eureka Airport to Salt Lake City, Utah, on 50-seat Canadair jets with the proposed service to start as early as May.

According to first quarter 2007 totals from the U.S. Department of Transportation, it will cost Delta $6.3 million annually to put the two roundtrip routes into service.

Each leg is estimated to cost $4,355 for a daily total of $17,420. If a combination of occupancy loads and fuel costs left Delta $3,000 a day short of breaking even — $90,000 total in the first month — then the revenue guarantee would make up the difference.

“In Redmond, they never had to touch a penny of the guarantee,” Holtkmap said.

Delta service to Redmond, Ore., began in March 2005 and posted a 73 percent occupancy in the first month that grew to 75 percent in the second month and 80 percent in the third month.

“There are imponderables in the equation and fuel is one of them,” Holtkamp said. “Can fuel prices drive people to a place where it’s too expensive to fly and they don’t use the service?

“But that’s a risk everywhere in the country and I can’t really see — no matter what it costs — that people have an alternative. It’s not like it’s getting cheaper to drive than fly. It doesn’t seem like passenger trains are coming back here and Scotty ain’t here to beam us up.”

Roughly 80 businesses pledged $475,000 to an air travel bank that serves as a commitment to pre-purchase travel from Delta.

In comparison, Redmond’s air travel bank drew 120 businesses and $640,000.

The delay still gives RREDC a week to run down another $25,000 in pledges to the air travel bank.

”We’d love to shine up perfectly that part of the package,” Holtkamp said. “It’d be nice to put a bow on it.”

The incentive package also includes a one-year waiver of airport facility and terminal rental fees and a $100,000 local marketing package aimed at increasing customer awareness of a third local airline choice in addition to Horizon Air and United.

“Although the travel bank is geared to business, Delta understands a large proportion of our travel is not business,” Holtkamp said. “There’s government travel and government can’t participate in the travel bank because of their procurement rules.”

Holtkamp said that while Humboldt State University made a generous pledge to the air travel bank, there are parts of the university that are similarly restricted.