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Flights from Youngstown to Chicago get final federal approval
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
Aerodynamics Inc. has received approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation to begin flights between the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport and Chicago O’Hare International starting July 1.
The airline received an email Friday from Katy O’Toole of the DOT granting authority to begin the flights. Dan Dickten, director of aviation at the regional airport in Vienna, forwarded a copy of the email to The Vindicator. A formal approval letter will be forthcoming, O’Toole said.
The airline will begin using 50-seat aircraft to provide 10 round-trip flights per week starting July 1 – two flights on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and one each the other four days of the week.
The tickets are expected go on sale the middle of next week on the www.flyadi.com website and later on sites such as Expedia, Orbit and Travelocity, said Mickey Bowman, senior vice president and chief operating officer for ADI.
“Our intent is to bring convenience back to the area so you don’t have to start with a 11/2-hour drive and the rigors” of larger airports, Bowman said.
“At Youngstown, you will never have more than 49 people in front of you in the TSA line,” he said.
Bowman said ADI’s aircraft are “a smaller version of jets that have served mainline airlines for years,” and ADI’s planes fly to Chicago in the same amount of time as larger aircraft such as 737s – one hour. ADI planes also have a lavatory and flight attendant.
ADI’s business has been focused in recent years on charter flights for NCAA teams and fans for lacrosse, basketball, softball and baseball, Bowman said.
Since being hired as aviation director in 2010, Dickten made it one of his chief goals to bring daily air service back to Youngstown, an airport that hasn’t had it since 2002.
To make daily service successful, Dickten is working toward bringing a second destination besides Chicago to the airport so that air travelers can also head toward the East Coast.
Customers will have to be patient at first with gaps between arrival in Chicago and transferring to a connecting flight, Dickten said.
“As time goes by and more flights are added per week, there will be an improvement in the lag time,” Dickten said.
The airport will pay ADI up to $1.2 million during the first year of the service and guarantee ADI at least a 5 percent profit. The $1.2 million comes from $780,000 from a DOT grant and $420,000 from local hotel-bed taxes from Mahoning and Trumbull counties paid to the Western Reserve Port Authority, which runs the airport.
Billboards for the new service already went up in Boardman, but the port authority authorized spending $96,000 for a marketing campaign by Palo Creative of Youngstown that will begin in earnest in about 10 days.