Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Delta's three daily flights from Roanoke to Cincinnati will be no more by year-end.

Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

The departures board at Roanoke Regional Airport is lit up Thursday. So far this year, the total number of passengers has fallen nearly 6 percent to 260,000.

Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Pilots, airport workers and travelers: Tighten your seat belts.

Roanoke Regional Airport is experiencing some potentially minor, though uncertain, turbulence.

Direct flights will be available to nine cities later this year, down from 10.

Total flights are down.

Two flight instruction programs have closed.

A consumer advocate is claiming Roanoke and many airports in its size category are at risk of closure.

Officials characterized the current challenges as nothing more at this point than Roanoke being pulled along on aviation's bumpy ride.

Major airlines are reducing flights in response to the economy nodding off and gasoline prices flaring.

On Tuesday, Comair said it will cut 300 pilots and ground more than a dozen planes to save money.

Northwest Airlines Corp. said Wednesday that it will cut 2,500 jobs.

But make no mistake, airport officials say: Roanoke's airport continues to offer Western Virginia a secure link to the air travel system and should always be there.

About "700,000 passengers a year use this airport. There's plenty of business to support this airport," said airport spokeswoman Sherry Wallace.

But warnings abound.

In May, nearly 55,000 passengers took off or arrived on flights at the airport -- down more than 14 percent from last year. So far this year, total passengers have fallen nearly 6 percent to 260,000.

Total flights -- which include air carriers, general aviation and military flights -- fell more than 33 percent in May to about 6,000. Total flights are down nearly 16 percent from the first half of last year.

Gordon Ewald, a pilot from Hardy, stood at Thursday's meeting of the airport commission to say that flights and departures are trending downward at what he considers a disconcerting rate.

He said plane traffic, known as operations, has fallen below the basis used to staff the Federal Aviation Administration air-traffic control tower and compensate controllers at its current levels.

As is normal operating procedure, the FAA is watching the airport's operations for six months, he said.

"I might call it probation," Ewald said.

The monitoring, technically called "a buffer," is not a reflection or an analysis of the work of air-traffic controllers, Ewald said.

If operations remain below the required level, a review could begin. At the end of the review, the FAA could cut the staff and pay in the tower.

As one potential, if only partial, strategy, Ewald supports recruitment of a new flight school.

Fuzzy Minnix, a commissioner, responded: "Like Mr. Ewald, I'm concerned."

Jacqueline Shuck, the airport's executive director, said after the meeting that the airport is not on probation.

FAA spokesman Jim Peters said after the meeting that no changes for the air traffic control service in Roanoke are planned or contemplated at this time.

Nor is the airport posting takeoff and landing totals below the required threshold to maintain air-traffic control services where they are, according to an e-mail Brian Townsend, assistant city manager, sent to city council member Court Rosen. Townsend said he received the information from Efren Gonzalez, deputy executive director.

However, the airport is posting totals on "the lower end" of the metric, Townsend learned from Gonzalez.

In another potential warning, industry observer Kevin Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition on June 25 placed Roanoke and many similar-sized airports on a self-created list he circulated to nationwide media and others of the airports "most likely to lose some or all service."

Mitchell said his campaign is a call for federal leaders to act soon to stabilize aviation in the wake of oil shocks.

"Crap" was Wallace's word for the report's calling Roanoke an endangered airport.

Yes, Roanoke's airport has lost some air service, officials said.

Delta has said it will drop service to and from Cincinnati -- three daily flights -- by year-end.

LC's Flying Service closed in the spring. And Roanoke city schools recently suspended airport-based flying instruction.

Shuck called Mitchell's analysis flawed.

"He has no data behind it," she said. She said she could not disagree with his claim more.

Is there no chance of Roanoke's airport losing all service?

"No chance," Shuck said.

Mitchell, who was interviewed by phone, said further increases in oil could cause air carriers to collapse as expenses outpace what consumers are willing to pay for a flight.

He noted that the Air Transport Association, the trade group representing major airlines, told The New York Times on June 28 that 100 communities could lose commercial air service before the end of the year.