Southern Florida Markets should be Explored

Southern Florida (according to the IMG Study) is the fourth destination used for residents in ORH's primary trade area. The markets that would work for ORH are Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Fort Myers and St. Pete's/Clearwater (refering to page 51 of IMG study).

From the airlines recommended by IMG, the only viable ones that offer service to these cities are Hooters Air, and USA 3000. Sun Country also does, but just to their Minneapolis hub. Bill and WIP were right when they recommended that we send City Manager O'Brien and/or airport liason Phil Niddrie to Myrtle Beach and Philly to meet with thes airlines' executives.

Allegiant Air is a great first step, but it will not make ORH a successful airport. The city must agreesively pursue viable leisure carriers that offer service to popular vacation destinations, like Southern Florida. We have to stop fantasizing over DJ Air when they aren't even an established airline and have no capital!

Great Compliments: Cape Air & Linear Air

Cape Air was one of the airlines suggested by the IMG study for ORH to pursue. Linear Air would also work well with service to Teterboro, NY or White Plains, NY from ORH. Cape Air offers scheduled and charter service on their cessnas to the Cape and Islands from Boston, Providence, New Bedfore, Hyannis and P-town. Linear Air currently serves Bedford to Teterboro and also has on-demand service to White Plains. A good bargaining chip for ORH is how much less it costs per passenger to land here compared to BED. Worcester would fit well in Cape Air's system, as it also would in Linear Air's. The ORH Cape Air service could even be seasonal.

Cape Air could offer every other hour service to each of the islands during the high season???This point-to-point popular weekend get away would also compliment Linear Air if they flew from ORH to one of their business destinations.

These small airlines would be a good fit for ORH with frequent, fairly inexpensive service on small private aircraft.

IMG Study Suggests Certain Airlines

IMG has released it's study on the future of Worcester Regional Airport. They concluded that ORH should aggressively persue certain airlines. They mainly targeted secondary leisure airlines. They were:

• Allegiant Air
• Cape Air
• Frontier Airlines
• Hooters Air
• Sun Country Airlines
• SunShip 1 Airlines
• Vacation Express
• USA 3000 Airlines

These airlines would all serve ORH well, and should be aggressively persued.

AirTran Airways

Has anyone from ORH ever met with AirTran Airways? If anyone knows the answer to this please leave a comment.

AirTran has a great route structure that ORH would fit nicely in. Their Boeing 717 and 737 aircraft are the youngest and most efficient in the industry. Rather then targeting SkyWest, why don't we try and get AirTran to Atlanta with their 717s? One of the huge differences between AirTran and most other airlines is that it is publically traded, profitable, and growing (Something that most airlines interested in ORH don't have). When ASA flew to Atlanta, it had good load factors.The service failed due to the service's price structure and schedule. AirTran would be able to provide the schedule that would be widely used.

AirTran could service to a number of other cities. Just a few are:

• Fort Lauderdale
• Miami
• Tampa
• Chicago (Midway)
• Baltimore
• Washington D.C.
• Philadelphia