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SPEAKING OUT: Improving air service -- a challenging community project |
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Gainesville
Sun - June 10, 2001 Marilyn Tubb is chairwoman of the Gainesville-Alachua County Airport Authority. Already underway, the task of bettering the Gainesville Airport is a challenging project. A highlight of Memorial Day weekend this year was the arrival of new southbound air service connecting Gainesville to Miami and points beyond. Discover Air, a public charter airline, offers twice daily round trips to Miami beginning May 28. In June, Discover adds daily service to Orlando, as well. This is good news for Gainesville air travelers. But it also raises some challenging questions. Will area travelers use the new service? If not, how can we ever expect to add a larger carrier for that route? What is the best way to attract, support and retain needed air service? What can we do to improve our situation? Most experts agree we are experiencing a major national crisis in aviation. Domestic air travel has grown tremendously, but our capacity to handle this growth simply has not kept pace. For example, it takes approximately 15 years to add two miles of new runway to existing airports. There has been only one new airport built in the past 10 years. Overlapping jurisdictional reviews and approvals contribute significantly to this incredible delay in adding needed capacity. In addition, there are forces of change underway that will probably result in less competition, less choice and higher costs: a greater concentration of airlines and fewer major players; a shortage of pilots and mechanics; and capacity issues at a few major airports are choking the entire system. The fleet of aircraft is changing, and the new regional jets, while efficient, are costly to acquire. Low-fare carriers like Southwest help keep fares down in the markets they serve, but they skew traffic away from small communities like Gainesville. The costs of fuel and labor are rising. Airlines now try to maximize revenue and shareholder return -- not serve markets. Commercial airline service is vital to Florida tourism. However, we are a "low yield" state because so many of the flights in and out of Florida are filled with people flying on discount fares or frequent-flyer fares. Airlines make more money in other states flying the same volume of passengers. Carriers to Florida need to operate at a higher load factor to compensate for these lower yields. Florida is located geographically at the extreme eastern- and southern-most tip of the country. We are at the end of most domestic flights. A state located in the heartland, like Ohio, has many airline route structures that crisscross above, and these states are also located in closer proximity to a greater number of airline connecting hubs. Therefore, it is difficult to compare scheduled commercial airline service in Florida to other "similar" markets. We have about 80 weekly departures -- five jet flights daily -- and we connect northbound to two hubs; Atlanta and Charlotte. As of May 28, we connect southbound to Miami with at least 15 weekly departures. But Gainesville alone is a small market, ranking 189 out of more than 350 airports nationwide. The airport does not receive any funding from the city or county. It operates as a self-sustaining business and makes money from airplane landing fees, rental fees, parking fees and fuel sales. Since 1997, when Delta pulled out of Gainesville and put a regional carrier in its place, we've lost 171 seats daily. We have less service, and what we have seems frequently to cost a lot more than the fare for a similar flight out of Jacksonville or Orlando. Why are our rates sometimes higher? Airlines are trying to maximize revenue per flight. Given our market demand and our reduced seat capacity, airlines will compute the fares in and out of Gainesville at a premium rate, and the computations vary by the minute depending on whether the plane is filling up. Airlines want the business traveler because business travelers will pay a premium rate for convenience. So, on the Gainesville connections, usually are only a few seats available per plane for leisure-fare tickets. Sometimes you get lucky and a good travel agent really can help. I frequently fly out of Gainesville at a very competitive rate, but I've certainly been quoted rates that make me want to drive out of town to another airport. The Airport Authority frequently is blamed for our lack of service and our high fares, but the Authority has no control over either fares or schedules. Lower airfares and more seats can only be accomplished by recruiting additional airlines to our community -- without alienating our current carriers. Regardless of who sits on the Authority, the reality is the air service for our community is precious, vulnerable and fickle. We can't take it for granted. So what are we doing to improve our situation? I am in my third year on the airport authority, and I serve as chairwoman for two more months. During my limited tenure, I've tried to focus on four goals:
While we've made some progress (see sidebar) in making the experience in the terminal a more satisfying one for travelers and others who use the airport, we know there is much to be done. We have been trying to get more flights -- reliably scheduled and at competitive rates. Working together, airport management, the authority, the business community, local elected leaders and the University of Florida all have been actively recruiting several air carriers with personal phone calls, letters, invitations to Gator sporting events, and regular visits and presentations to airline headquarters. We are not unique in dealing with the challenge of recruiting commercial air service. Tallahassee, Dothan, Chattanooga, Augusta, Asheville, Savannah, Knoxville, Melbourne, Sarasota, Naples and Daytona, just to name a few cities in the Southeast, all are trying to rebuild lost air service. There are seven basic elements airline-route planners want to see. -Economic data that indicates strong growth potential for the area -An active airport authority with a well-developed marketing plan -Demonstrable service deficiency (over-fared, under-served) -A high volume of the right mix of passengers -Reasonable airport costs -Evidence of community support, especially from local business -A strategic fit with their overall business plan. How do we demonstrate to an airline that we are under-served and over-fared, and that if they come we will deliver the right mix of paying passengers? I propose four strategies for a concentrated, town-gown collaborative effort.
We do not really know how much business we can offer to a prospective airline. We do know the leakage (70 percent of Gainesville air travelers used other airports) from a 1999 study of tickets purchased through travel agents. Many people today, though, use the Internet to buy their tickets. We know the total travel budgets of our 50 largest organizations ($15 million), but that's not the picture for our whole community. We need to improve our data about who travels are, where, when and at what cost. I propose that town and gown cooperate in an area-wide research survey of air travel over, say, a six-week period of time. Such a research survey would show community interest and support, as well as market size and potential. It may well be all we need to get our foot in the door again at Northwest or at AirTran, because we then will have new information the airlines do not have.
A second way to demonstrate community support for additional air service is to create a sizable pool of dollars for advertising and promotion. If an airline, now or existing, adds the service we say we want, we would promote that new service enthusiastically. Jackson, Miss., raised $750,000 to promote the addition of Southwest. Tallahassee raised more than $100,000 to promote Northwest. I am talking about significant dollars -- from the city, the county, the authority, private businesses and even the university, our largest employer.
To build demand, will every traveler when making his or her travel plans ask for the Gainesville connection first rather than only ask for the least expensive ticket? And if and when we get a low-fare carrier, will every traveler try to fly that Gainesville connection even if they do not get frequent-flyer points?
I believe we need to talk seriously about working with Ocala, a community within an hour's drive time. Ocala has manufacturers who are in a global market and thousands of retired citizens. Together, Ocala and Gainesville present a very attractive business opportunity for an airline. There is a group forming to promote regional air service out of the Ocala Airport on the presumption that Ocala will be the regional population center of the future. What is our attitude about that? And what is our attitude about using our airport facility as a "transportation center" for rail, bus and limousine, linking to air service in other airports? Would we be better off to focus our efforts on creating an efficient, reliable ground transportation network connected to Jacksonville or to Orlando, rather than on promoting air service at Gainesville Regional Airport? Should we try to do both? Bringing better air service to North Central Florida will not happen by itself. The authority, the business community, local government, concerned citizens and travelers all need to work together to improve our air service. In the meantime, I encourage you to "Fly Easy. Fly Gainesville." See June 10, 2001, issue of Gainesville Sun for original article. |
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