Spreading its wings

By Don Shilling

Airport looks to expand with daily flights

“I’m always confident we will get somebody.”

Steve Bowser

Director of aviation

The airport is dangling a federal grant to attract daily airline service.

VIENNA — A plan to bring daily flights to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport is warming up but isn’t ready to take off just yet.

For the past year, the airport has been dangling $575,000 in federal funds that can be used to help an airline cover its initial costs in setting up regularly scheduled service.

The money has attracted some attention, but airport officials haven’t yet been persuaded to sign a contract.

One proposal came from a travel agency in the South that wants to fly from the airport in Vienna Township to Florida so passengers could have easy access to cruise lines. That offer didn’t meet the airport’s plans to reach out to business travelers, said Steve Bowser, director of aviation for the local airport.

Another proposal came from an operator of a New York charter bus company. Joel Azumah has talked to Bowser about creating scheduled flights from the local airport to Cincinnati, where passengers could hook into other flights.

Azumah has no experience in the airline industry but said he intends to sign a contract with a regional jet operator to operate flights both from the Youngstown airport and one in Gary, Ind.

Bowser didn’t want to comment on Azumah’s proposal.

He said, however, that he has received two proposals that call for the creation of daily flights that cater to the business traveler, but both have been placed on hold because they are start-up operations. Bowser said the costs of starting from scratch are high, and he is concerned those operations may not be sustainable.

His goal is to receive a proposal from an established airline. He has been meeting with airline officials, both in person and on the phone, trying to persuade them to schedule service into Youngstown.

“I’m always confident we will get somebody,” Bowser said.

If service is handled correctly, the airport can overcome some of the negative perceptions that it had in the past, he said.

Previous daily service, which ended in 2002, used turbo prop planes that consumers saw as inferior, he said. Previous airlines also didn’t succeed because they didn’t offer competitive fares, failed to market themselves locally and flew only to nearby cities that customers could drive to, Bowser said.

He is expecting the new service to resolve these problems by taking passengers to a major hub such as Atlanta or Chicago, where they could easily link to flights around the world. He expects the flights to use regional jets and be marketed locally.

His pitch to the airlines is that business people in the region would welcome the opportunity to fly from the airport because they could save time.

Passengers coming to the Youngstown airport would not be asked to arrive two hours early as they are at other airports, he said. They also would have easy access to parking and would not have to travel to Cleveland or Pittsburgh, he said.

In a 2007 survey by the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, 44 percent of responding businesses said they would increase air travel if the Youngstown airport met their needs. The average amount of increase listed was 34 percent.

Bowser also stresses to airlines that the Youngstown airport would work with them in reducing its fees and expenses as much as possible.

Plus, the federal money is there. The grant is designed to attract air service to smaller communities. An operator can be reimbursed for its operating expenses for between one and three years.

Adding daily service is the second part of the airport’s expansion strategy.

The first phase involved providing service for leisure travelers. In 2004, the airport received a $250,000 federal grant that was designed to cover marketing expenses for an airline.

Allegiant Airlines, which is based in Las Vegas, accepted the grant and has been serving the Youngstown airport since 2006.

It has been providing two flights a week for most of the year to Sanford, Fla., which is outside of Orlando. Bowser said the service has been so popular that Allegiant is expanding the service. Allegiant’s 150-seat planes normally are more than 90 percent full, Bowser said.

The airline has increased its service to four flights a week during part of April and is considering offering more flights at other times of the year and adding other destinations, he said.

Allegiant has shown that an airline can be successful with leisure travel from Youngstown, Bowser said.

Now, he is out to show that daily service can be successful as well. He points to Allegiant when he meets with other airlines.

Leisure travel is driven by price, and Allegiant has shown that people will come to the Youngstown airport if the price is right, he said.

Business travel, however, is all about convenience because trips often can’t be arranged months in advance to get the lowest price, he said. He thinks the right airline with the right destination and marketing will succeed in flying business travelers out of Youngstown.

“You have to be persistent about these things,” he said.

shilling@vindy.com