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Port authority members gather for orientation, ribbon cutting
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
Western Reserve Port Authority members gathered for an orientation and work meeting Thursday to help two of the new board members learn about the organization’s history and major projects.
The two new members are Sam Covelli and Dave Mosure, who along with interim Executive Director John Moliterno and other board members took part in animated discussions about the potential for daily air service possibly being restored soon. New board member Dave Detec, an attorney, could not attend.
Covelli, owner of Warren-based Covelli Enterprises, the nation’s largest Panera Bread franchisee, asked a simple question in relation to making daily air service a success at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport: What has been the airport’s best marketing tool?
Officials listed the work they have done in association with Allegiant Air, the airport’s primary air-service provider, but Moliterno acknowledged that discussions on a “general” marketing plan for the airport have only recently begun.
“We haven’t done much of that,” Moliterno said, but that will be more and more important “as we get more flights to market,” he said. “We have not branded the airport. We need to do it sooner rather than later.”
Covelli asked whether there are one or two simple points that could be stressed — such as having the lowest prices in the region or the most convenience, “and then market the heck out of it.”
Mosure, vice president of MS Consultants, an engineering company, said driving to the Vienna airport saves a great deal of time compared with using Pittsburgh International Airport because a passenger can get through security so much faster and park so much closer to the terminal.
“We have to market that — the convenience,” Moliterno agreed.
Aerodynamics Inc. of Beachwood, Ohio, is trying to gain approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation to begin an air route from Youngstown to Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
It would fly a couple of times per day between the two airports and give local passengers the ability to connect to destinations around the world. Officials are hoping the service could start up as early as this month.
The most-recent filing from ADI to DOT says Chicago is deemed the best hub airport for ADI to use because passengers would not have to pass through security when transferring to another flight in Chicago.
At the end of the meeting, Dan Dickten, director of aviation, led the board members and others in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a 14-unit building of T-hangars that has been built north of the airport terminal.
It is the second set of 14 hangars that have been built in the past two years. All but one of the 14 new hangars have been rented. The purpose of the T-hangars is to provide space for smaller aircraft so that space in the airport’s larger hangars can be used for larger aircraft.
The T-hangars have been rented by flying clubs, businesses and private pilots, Dickten said.