Rockford airport officials: Good thing we weren’t part of JetAmerica fiasco
July 22nd, 2009 at 05:02pm Thomas V. Bona
Chicago Rockford International Airport had a chance to be part of JetAmerica’s rollout, but were asked to provide marketing and/or revenue guarantee money up front, airport Executive Director Bob O’Brien just confirmed. The airport said no, thanks. (Toledo, on the other hand, paid for a $150,000 “learning experience” and other airports lost a bit less for an airline that never got off the ground.)
“Clearly we made the right decision and we’re not as badly bruised as Lansing and Toledo,” O’Brien said. “On the other side of the coin, I take no pleasure in being right and getting nothing. … I just wish that we could have been in the rollout and they could have rolled out.”
O’Brien is not ready to throw the JetAmerica folks under the bus, as they’ll be back in some form or another. JetAmerica is already saying as much: “We have decided to suspend our operations in order to refocus on different markets. We still strongly believe that there is an unmet need for affordable air service to secondary markets and we look forward to offering this option again in the near future,” CEO John Weikle said.
If they come back looking to fly out of RFD, O’Brien will listen, though not if they’re asking for a lot of money again
“It totally depends on what they came back with, in terms of destinations, in terms of aircraft, in terms of fare structure,” O’Brien said. “There’s no blank checks. We’re interested, but it has to make sense.”
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2 Comments Add your own
1. Sally Hanks | July 23rd, 2009 at 10:46 am
They should have picked RFD in the first place. The numbers just weren’t there for LAN and TOL, and they were barely there for SBN.
If they were relying on advance ticket sales as the only source of revenue other than a small amount of startup capital, they clearly picked the wrong cities, and should have checked with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to see where the small market to BWI/EWR opportunities were. RFD, GRB, PIA, ATW, I can go on and on.
But there are very few markets east of Chicago that either can support EWR/BWI service or that don’t already have it to one of the NY/DC region’s other airports.
Weikle should have looked at his strategy a little bit better to determine how to make it economically feasible to stretch from New York and Washington into the “west of Chicago” heartland because not only is the competition minimal in the smaller Midwestern cities, but the demand is there. On average, +/- 60 people travel between Peoria and New York a day. These are just the people who are willing to pay the premium fares to go through security at PIA rather than ORD. There is at least twice that many that drive to ORD or STL to get the nonstop. Now, if you offer them cheap seat service out of PIA instead of LAN, where the average is +/- 40, or TOL, where the average is +/- 15 (Yes, FIFTEEN!), you can see that Weikle and his team clearly chose the wrong markets at the outset. There’s no way that he could possibly fly empty planes out of market bases that are sick of driving to O’hare, and that can fly cheaper from their home airport. IMPOSSIBLE.
Jet America would gain far more in the long run if they chose the right markets instead of trying to dig up comparatively small revenue guarantees from airports that are never going to be able to sustain the service anyway.
I am one of the few people that likes his business plan. However, you can’t fill 150 seat 738’s out of Toledo or Lansing any more than you can sell Don Perignon on 11th Street and expect to make a profit.
2. rfdbusinessman | July 23rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Sally: Terrific comments, right on the money. Are your getting your info from the Bureau of Transportation website ? My only additional comment would be that I thought the aircraft that JetAmerica was planning to use was too big.
I think Bob’s comments are right on. Leave the door at least ajar to them but also raise the bar. Yes, it HAS to make sense to do it.
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