Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International is finally growing again. Its owners are too busy fighting to notice.
SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY — Carl Beardsley spent a decade building the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport back up. He landed Breeze Airways. He brought Florida flights back for the first time since 2018. He watched passenger numbers climb 31 percent last year.
Then, on Nov. 25, he disappeared.
The airport’s executive director is now on indefinite “sabbatical leave.” Officials won’t say why. His deputy is running the place. And the two counties that own AVP? They’ve spent the past six months screaming at each other over a $144,000 bill.
Welcome to northeastern Pennsylvania’s premier airport.
The Dumbest Fight in Local Government
Here’s what Luzerne and Lackawanna counties have been arguing about since May 2024: police officers at the airport.
The feds used to pay for cops at AVP through something called the Law Enforcement Officer program. That funding ended. Luzerne County kept paying — $144,000 a year. Lackawanna County said no thanks.
That’s it. That’s the whole dispute. One county wanted the other to split a bill that amounts to roughly one employee’s salary.
It consumed six months of board meetings. Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo and Lackawanna Commissioner Bill Gaughan turned the airport boardroom into a cage match.
Gaughan called the police program “expensive security theater” at the Nov. 20, 2025, meeting. The airport already spends $500,000 on armed security guards, he said. TSA has armed officers. Why pay for more?
Crocamo fired back: “Security and safety isn’t a sandwich. I will never ever apologize for putting the safety of the residents of Luzerne County first.”
They finally cut a deal on Nov. 19, 2025. The airport pays half, each county pays a quarter. Congratulations to everyone involved for taking half a year to agree on $36,000 apiece.
The Real Problem
While the counties bickered over pocket change, a much bigger crisis was building.
The FAA told the airport its ownership structure doesn’t work anymore. The original agreement between Luzerne and Lackawanna dates to April 9, 1968. The feds now want a single “sponsor” for grant purposes. No new agreement, no federal money.
How much federal money? About $21.3 million over the next few years.
The deadline to fix this: Jan. 1, 2026.
As of the Dec. 18, 2025, board meeting, the counties still hadn’t signed anything.
Luzerne officials complained that Lackawanna wouldn’t answer their questions. “We’re expected to sign a partnership, a financial long-term deal regarding hundreds of millions of dollars over the future, and they won’t answer our questions,” Councilman Brian Thornton said at a Dec. 9 work session. “No reply, crickets.”
Some Luzerne officials floated taking over the airport entirely. Lackawanna Commissioner Gaughan shrugged: “I don’t understand the controversy. It makes sense to stick with what we’ve been doing since the 50s.”
They have days to figure this out.
Meanwhile, the Airport Is Actually Doing Fine
Here’s the irony: strip away the governance circus and AVP is having its best run in years.
Breeze Airways showed up on Jan. 30, 2024, with flights to Orlando — the first direct Florida service since Allegiant bailed in January 2018. By October, Breeze had added Myrtle Beach, Fort Myers, and Tampa. Passengers showed up.
The numbers from 2025:
- January: up 47.6 percent
- February: up 32.8 percent
- April: up 26.4 percent
Total 2024 boardings ran 31 percent higher than 2023. American and United are adding capacity. The state handed over $6.2 million on June 3, 2025, for terminal expansion — the biggest single award in that funding round.
AVP now runs about 22 daily flights to nine destinations: Charlotte, Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Washington-Dulles, Orlando, Fort Myers, Tampa, and Myrtle Beach. For a small regional airport in a shrinking population zone, that’s not bad.
The Guy Who Made It Happen Is Gone
Which brings us back to Beardsley.
He took over in January 2015, coming from the Greater Binghamton Airport across the state line. Starting salary: $115,000. He rode out COVID, kept the airlines happy, and pulled off the Breeze deal that everyone had been chasing for years.
Now he’s on “sabbatical.” Attorney Don Frederickson, the airport’s co-solicitor, wouldn’t explain further on Nov. 25.
“He’s taken a sabbatical and I really can’t discuss personnel and health issues,” Frederickson said. “They’re not trying to get rid of him or anything like that. They like Carl. The intent is he’s going to come back.”
Beardsley himself isn’t talking.
His deputy, BJ Teichman, is running the airport and trying to get two county governments to sign a partnership agreement before they blow a $21 million hole in the budget.
What’s Actually at Stake
The 2026 airport budget that passed on Nov. 20: $12.4 million in revenue, $8.2 million in operating costs.
Federal grants already in the pipeline: $21.3 million.
State money for the terminal project: $6.2 million.
The cost of the police dispute that consumed six months: $144,000.
The bi-county board meets the fourth Thursday of every month at 10:30 a.m., in the airport’s conference room. It’s open to the public. Bring popcorn.