No room at the O’Hare inn for Virgin America
November 17th, 2008 at 04:46pm Thomas V. Bona
Virgin America’s entry into the Chicago market is being threatened, since it can’t find any gate space at O’Hare International Airport. Which of course begs the question … could they go somewhere else? There are several alternative airports … including one up here. And starting in December, one of Virgin’s leased-out aircraft will be flying out of Rockford to Punta Gorda, Fla.
I don’t know what RFD’s plans are, if any, to woo Virgin (and yes, I know how that sounds). But I can imagine airport staff being extra nice to VA’s crew members (cue Bob O’Brien driving them to their hotels).
On the one hand, it would make a lot of sense for VA to come here if it couldn’t get into ORD. It’s a low-cost carrier that would fit into RFD’s long-term goal of being “Midway 2 northwest of O’Hare). But it also has a particular target for business travelers, and may have its eyes set on the downtown and close-in Chicago folks, not the northwest suburban types.
Wherever they end up in Chicago, I can’t wait to fly on one of their planes. With all due respect to Punta Gorda, it would be VERY easy to convince me to fly one of these to San Francisco or Seattle…
 (Mmmm, mood lighting)
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
1 Comment Add your own
1. rfdbusinessman | November 17th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I would guess that Bob and the staff at RFD will certainly do what they can to market to Virgin America and have probably done some already. VA sure looks like they want to fly to the main metro airports, like ORD, and not to secondary airports. I find it difficult to believe that our regional air service area cannot support business flights to a significant hub, like Denver, Washington DC, Atlanta, or New York on a once or twice daily basis.
Note that RFD has already indicated that they will work on attracting a Mexican airline via the Apple Vacation charters flown by AeroMexico this coming season. I have to believe they will attempt to market not only to AeroMexico but others like Mexicana, VivaAerobus, Volaris, and Interjet as well.
It is a tough time for the general economy and the airline industry but RFD seems to be very resourceful and not afraid to at least try some things. RFD will be just fine in the long term.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed