By Matt Assad, Of The Morning Call
9:20 p.m. EDT, May 2, 2013
Hoping to turn the page on a dismal two years, Lehigh Valley International Airport officials are looking to cash in on the Super Bowl in 2014.
No, the struggling airport will not be plunking down $4 million for a 30-second Super Bowl ad that could be viewed by 100 million viewers. But officials believe the airport's proximity to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., may give LVIA a shot at attracting a flock of corporate and private jets during Super Bowl week.
Airport officials hope to attract as many as 100 private planes full of rich folks who would not only pay landing fees and buy fuel at the airport, but also rent hotel rooms and eat in local restaurants.
"The airports close to MetLife will be overwhelmed and overcrowded," LVIA Executive Director Charles Everett Jr. said. "We think we can offer people a lot less time on the tarmac for a little more time on the highway."
It remains to be seen how successful LVIA will be at becoming the unofficial overflow airport of the 2014 Super Bowl. But Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority members are willing to try almost anything to offset a tough economy that has driven down passenger traffic and a grim financial picture worsened by a court order that it pay $26 million for land it took from a developer in the mid-1990s.
Extracting fees from Learjet-owning football fans seems like as good a plan as any, authority members said.
New Orleans Lakefront Airport showed how big the crush of Super Bowl-bound private planes can be.
The small-plane airport 8 miles from the Superdome, where the Baltimore Ravens played the San Francisco 49ers on Feb. 3, hosted 500 private planes during Super Bowl week. Plane traffic was so heavy that Lakefront hired an engineer to determine how to pack the planes in tight and rented a crane to quickly remove disabled planes from the runway so others could get through.
A specially hired "ramp boss" and his staff of 10 had to be brought in to direct traffic so that when the game was over, a plane could take off every 60 seconds, said David Smith, Lakefront Airport operations manager.
"It was a lot of business, a lot of fun and a big, big headache for us," Smith said. "It was really something to see. I've been in this business for 47 years and I've never seen anything quite like it."
Even with all that coordination, Lakefront had to turn away dozens of private planes that ended up at airports across the region surrounding New Orleans. That's what LVIA officials are counting on.
Teterboro Airport, 7 miles from MetLife Stadium, will be playing the role of Lakefront this year, but its capacity is much smaller than Lakefront's, Everett said. That means if the Super Bowl gets the same private plane traffic it got last year, hundreds of planes will be forced to use other airports, such as Morristown Municipal Airport, 30 miles to the west; Stewart International Airport, 64 miles north; and yes, even LVIA, 80 miles to the west.
"Teterboro is going to get very congested, very quickly," said Darren Betters, LVIA's director of commercial services. "After that happens, we think we provide about as convenient an option as anyone. I think we could handle as many as 100 planes for the Super Bowl."
So, LVIA will be sending email blasts through its fuel provider and the fixed-based operations companies that line up private air travel. It will also be running Super Bowl ads in air travel trade magazines in the months leading up to the big game. And an authority board committee led by member Marc Troutman is reaching out to the Super Bowl host committee.
LVIA has had limited success in attracting private planes for big events. It has recently begun to gain a small following for the Pocono 400 in June and the Pennsylvania 400 in August at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Monroe County. It had 10 planes from the event last August — mostly transporting teams in the race — and for the first time will be promoting LVIA as a landing zone this year. It's even lined up a helicopter shuttle, available to pick up private-plane passengers at LVIA and drop them right onto the infield at Pocono Raceway.
Within hours of its first email blast promoting LVIA for the June Pocono 400, it had a multiplane reservation placed by the Michael Waltrip Racing team, Betters said.
Still, Smith cautioned LVIA against counting its Super Bowl money before it is collected.
"By the time we hired all the extra security, field people, the ramp boss and the engineers to handle all the craziness, we were lucky to break even," Smith said. "It was great for the community, but we sure didn't get rich doing it."
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