Airport manager Jason Licon still gets six to 10 calls a day from people inquiring about flying from the Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport to Las Vegas.
He has to tell them Allegiant Air abruptly stopped flying from Northern Colorado in October and the regional airport has yet to find another carrier to take its place. But Licon hopes the commercial skies won’t be quiet for long.
“We are doing everything we can to put our case out there to try to attract another carrier,” Licon said. “As it stands, we are in big competition with other airports competing for the same thing we’re looking for.”
Fort Collins-Loveland airport, owned by the two cities but located in Loveland, has contracted with AvPorts, a Washington, D.C.,-based airport management company, to develop a strategic plan for the airport.
AvPorts officials are gathering data on emplanements, who’s flying out of Denver, what airlines they’re using and how large of a geographic area the airport can realistically draw from, said Walter Elish, CEO of Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp., which is helping the airport enhance its presentation and target some airlines.
“I’m pretty positive,” Elish said. “But it’s an uphill battle. It’s a very competitive industry.”
Northern Colorado has more than 800,000 residents who could conceivably fly out of Fort Collins-Loveland airport, Elish said. Allegiant’s planes were nearly full when the destination airline stopped flying in and out of Northern Colorado, a decision that still mystifies local officials.
What type of airline might come to the area is still to be determined. Allegiant is one of the only destination carriers around, but airport officials will look at whatever carrier could be a good fit, Elish said. The preference would be an airline that passengers could board in Loveland and connect elsewhere. “That is what the business traveler would like as well as the leisure traveler,” he said.
NCEDC expects soon to survey businesses about their travel needs and if they would fly out of Fort Collins-Loveland if it had a new carrier.
In the meantime, Licon has been busy getting in front of a number of airlines recently, although he declined to name names.
“Primarily right now we are just going out and showing what we have, what our population base is, what the market share analysis could be for a potential airline,” he said.
“I am still optimistic, but the biggest factor we have to compete against is our proximity to Denver. But we are doing everything we can.”
Attracting a new airline might require some enticements or subsidies from the cities, but officials know an airline can still pull the plug when the subsidies run out, like American Airlines did in Cheyenne.
That city provided a one-year, $1.4 million revenue guarantee, but after the year ran out, American Eagle left.
“Subsidization doesn’t always work,” Licon said. But comparing Cheyenne’s 92,000 population area to Northern Colorado’s is like comparing apples to “humongous apples,” he said. “We are trying to make a convincing argument, but it might take an investment to bring them in. It could be incentives, it could be a variety of things.”
Source: http://www.coloradoan.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment