QUINCY — Acting Airport Manager Gabriel Hanafin hopes representatives from the two airlines who want to become Quincy’s essential air service provider will make presentations before a Quincy City Council meeting in late July or early August.

However, members of the aeronautics committee expressed reluctance at Wednesday’s meeting in city council chambers to give their blessing to either proposal.

San Francisco’s Boutique Air is offering to use single-engine Pilatus PC-12 aircraft with eight- or nine-passenger cabins if it wins the Quincy contract. Southern Airways Express of Palm Beach, Florida, offers to use nine-passenger Cessna Grand Caravans, which are single-engine turboprop aircraft.

Cape Air, which notified the US Department of Transportation in May of its intention to end passenger air service to Quincy, uses twin-engine Tecnam P2012 planes.

But according to its website, Boutique Air recently added a fleet of Beechcraft King Air 350 aircraft, which are twin-engine aircraft.

“The problem is (the airlines are offering) a single-engine aircraft,” Quincy Mayor Mike Troup said. “Quincy has never accepted single-engine aircraft for commercial flights.”

Hanafin said Quincy officials can “veto” any EAS offer that doesn’t include twin-engine aircraft. He also said that if the city accepted offers from airlines calling for single-engine planes, it would also lose the right to request twin-engine planes forever.

Committee member and former acting manager of Quincy Regional Airport Jeff Steinkamp asked Hanafin to double-check that information before airline officials make their presentations — which aren’t yet scheduled.

“I kind of checked out this (problem) with other guys at the airport,” Steinkamp said. “They said we would drop (twin-engine planes) for the next two years, but since we’re doing things again in two years, we’re opening wide and can still get multi-engine planes.”

“As we’ve never had a single-engine service, we retain veto power,” Hanafin replied. “To any single-engine supplier, we can say as a community that we prefer twin-engine aircraft. If we accept a single-engine supplier, we lose this right of veto in perpetuity.

“With all due respect, I would like to ask you to really check this out,” Steinkamp said. “Maybe we need to get something in writing.”

Troup said if the city chooses not to accept single-engine planes, the Department of Transportation will have to negotiate with Cape Air to maintain service to Quincy.

“It’s not like we can lose our options and we’re not going to have flights,” Troup said. “We are well.”

“I think that’s a great position to take,” Steinkamp said.

Committee member Eric Entrup, a city councilor from the 1st arrondissement, wondered if the public forums were necessary.

“Is everybody kind of in a state of, ‘We have to veto this,’ because we don’t want single-engine aircraft and we have two bids here for single-engine planes?” He asked.

Troup said he thinks the forums are worthwhile because they will let the public know the details.

“(Single-engine flights are) definitely a concern for the city,” Hanafin said after the committee meeting. “That’s why we’re really looking forward to hearing from the public to see how they like the number of engines on the plane. Over the years, that’s one thing that has made Cape Air so appealing to the public. They were offering a twin engine service.We’ll have to wait and see what the public says.

Hanafin said pilots of twin-engine planes practice flying in the event of one engine failure.

“If a single-engine plane, by chance, has its engine failed, it still has plenty of glide power,” he said. “It’s not all catastrophic when they lose an engine. A twin engine gives a kind of extra cushion.

Hanafin informed the committee that Cape Air has reduced the number of flights offered to Quincy, effective July 11.

It maintained nine flights a week to Lambert International in St. Louis (for $47 one-way per flight) and O’Hare in Chicago (for $72 one-way per flight). The number of flights to Chicago remains unchanged, but Cape Air will only fly from Quincy to St. Louis three times a week – Monday, Thursday and Saturday, with all flights departing at 12:40 p.m.

Hanafin said the number of flights from Quincy dropped nearly 15% from May to June. There were 711 boardings in May and only 606 in June. Fifty-four percent of boardings in June were in Chicago.