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Glitches causing problems for Chicago fliers being fixed, airport director says
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
The new Chicago flights from the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport on Great Lakes JetExpress are on pace to be self-sustaining within seven to eight months, the local airport director said Wednesday.
The flights were 32 percent full last week but need to reach 70 percent to be self-sustaining, Dan Dickten, aviation director, told the Western Reserve Port Authority board at its monthly meeting.
One of the problems has been confusion over the name of the airline. Though the operating company is Aerodynamics Inc., the name customers want to use to buy tickets and for other purposes is Great Lakes JetExpress, Dickten said.
Board members have expressed some frustration in recent weeks over customers being confused by the airline’s name. ADI announced the new name June 22, about a week before the flights began July 1, which didn’t leave customers much time to become familiar with it.
Similarly, signage at Chicago O’Hare International Airport failed to provide customers with the help they needed, and the TV monitors at O’Hare did not list Great Lakes JetExpress flights at times, Dickten said.
Some of those problems have been corrected, and some still are being fixed, Dickten said.
The airport’s consultant, Tom Reich, has indicated that the number of passengers on the flights so far is about what would be expected in a market that was without daily air service for 14 years until these flights began, Dickten said.
The port authority has guaranteed the new airline that it will make a profit for the first year, regardless of how many passengers fly, by providing a revenue guarantee. The guarantee will pay up to $1.2 million from a Federal Aviation grant money and local matching money.
The service needs to be self-sustaining at least by the time the revenue-guarantee money runs out, officials have said.
By an 8-0 vote, the board approved paying ADI $88,000 in revenue-guarantee money for the first part of July. ADI sent the authority its first invoice Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Transportation will reimburse the board 65 percent. Dickten said the amount of revenue-guarantee money ADI receives for all of July will be around $250,000 if bookings remain similar through the end of the month.
The airline is offering 10 flights per week on 50-seat aircraft twice Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and once Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
In other business, the port authority approved a lease for the land on which J.J. Cafaro of JJC Investment Trust LLC will build a new hangar to house his corporate aircraft. His initial annual rent will be $19,602.