Better act fast on airport day trips

July 25th, 2008 at 12:15pm Thomas V. Bona

In a fit of marketing genius, Chicago Rockford International Airport shows on its Web site how many seats are left on its upcoming day trips. Here’s the noon  12:30 p.m. tally:

• Sunday trip to Indianapolis: 130/131 seats sold, one left!
• Aug. 7. to Mount Rushmore: 69/131 seats sold. It’s not moving as fast as others, and it needs sales to continue strong for the trip to happen. But airport officials are confident that if this doesn’t work out, an overnight trip would. We’ll see how the first attempt goes.
• Aug. 10 to Niagara Falls: 56/131 64/131 seats sold in three hours. They’ve hit on something here. The first two Niagara day trips sold out in a day or less, so if you’re thinking of this one, don’t wait
• Aug. 14 to Mackinac Island: 25/131 31/131 seats sold in three hours. The previous trip also sold out in a day, so these may go fast too.

Are any other airports doing anything like this? Not that we can tell. First off, I don’t know of any other airport that effectively operates its own airline, so others don’t have this flexibility (they’d have to convince an airline to fly each trip). But this could catch on. If RFD averages six sold-out day trips a month, 10 months a year, that’s 7,800 outbound passengers a year the airport didn’t otherwise have. That’s almost an extra month of passengers in their totals.

Also, the airport isn’t making any money off these trips. The goal is to break even, to keep public attention on RFD, to give passengers a taste of the “hassle-free” experience with the hopes they’ll return for scheduled service. It also means RFD is charging the lowest possible price it could given fuel prices.

This is a fascinating and, so far, wildly successful idea. Let’s see how it grows and catches on elsewhere.

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