- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
St. Louis Needs 'Essential Air Service'
The Cape Girardeau City Council recently recommended to the U.S. Department of Transportation that Massachusetts-based Cape Air be the preferred airline for our local airport.
That federal agency provides subsidies to airlines which fly passengers from smaller cities -- such as Cape Girardeau -- to major airports under the Essential Air Service program. The Department of Transportation will make the final decision within the next few weeks as to which airline is awarded the service contract for our airport and the ample subsidy that goes with it.
It's anybody's guess as to which firm the DOT will select, but I think our City Council and the local Airport Advisory Board made a pretty good recommendation. Cape Air has a good price point with $50 fares and is promising four daily flights starting the first of November if they are chosen.
From what I've read, they sound like a pretty spunky organization. I like spunky.
However, I'm not so keen on one part of their proposal.
The four daily flights they are offering, are from Cape to St. Louis. This is great if you want to go to Clayton or St. Charles or Kinloch, but who flies to St. Louis from Cape to go to Clayton or St. Charles or Kinloch?
You fly to St. Louis from here to then go somewhere else. However, at the rate of route reductions that are occurring at Lambert International, the number of other places you can fly to directly from that airport is dwindling fast.
American Airlines, the dominant carrier out of St. Louis, was already planning on another round of flight reductions at Lambert in November. Then last week, they announced that they will cut even more routes next summer shaving their number of daily flights out of St. Louis to 36, going to a paltry 9 cities
Cape Air needs to strongly reconsider using St. Louis as their destination for flights from Cape Regional.
One of the key mandates of the Essential Air Service program is to provide "service to a hub airport." Lambert is no longer a hub. It's a sub-hub. Ideally, Cape Air needs to fly to Chicago where there are real airports with real options for travelers and forget about that old has been, St. Louis.
Thing are getting so dire for air transportation in the Gateway City that I think St. Louis will soon be able to qualify for the same Essential Air Service program that is subsidizing commercial air travel out of Cape Regional.
Some might say that St. Louis is too large for the program that is designed to help support smaller airports around the country. I'm not exactly sure how the 784th busiest airport in the United States is "essential," but if the U.S. Department of Transportation says Cape Regional is so, then it must be true.
For any doubting Thomases out there who question our airport's prominence, Cape Regional was responsible for .000059% of the nation's commercial air traffic last year or a little more than one half of one half of one half of one half of a half percent.
If you don't like me going all mathy on you, that works out to be 431 airline passengers in 2008.
And I guarantee that every single one of them was unquestionably essential.
Reputedly, St. Louis is a far busier airport than Cape. Supposedly 6.6 million people used Lambert in 2008 making it our country's 31st busiest airport and accounting for nearly one percent of all boardings nationwide.
Personally, I think the management at Lambert is cooking the books. Maybe it's an ego thing -- Doesn't every organization aspire to bigger than what they currently are? -- or an attempt to save face for that aggressive $1.1 billion airport runway expansion they completed a couple years ago.
Alaska may have been flogged for its proposed Bridge To Nowhere, but Missouri has its Runway to Bridgeton. Might as well be a bridge to nowhere for all the use it is getting.
No, I think Lambert has been fudging their passenger numbers. I bet they are counting the passengers on planes that happen to go over St. Louis. There are a number of those every day. Or maybe they are counting obese people as two or three travelers. Missouri is the 13th fattest state in the Union so it's reasonable to assume that we put lots of overweight people in the air. Lambert should count them extra.
Or possibly Lambert is counting the luggage guys and the cleaning crews who have to get on the planes to perform maintenance. Those jobs require boarding the aircraft. Or they could also be counting the test pilots who fly the military jets out of the Boeing complex at the airport multiple times a day.
I don't know how the management at Lambert International came up with this total for 2008, but I do know this:
Lambert should drop the whole pretense that it is a "major airport."
I'm sorry to say, but the glory days of it being the worldwide hub for TWA are long gone, never to return. So that being said, Lambert might as well report their real annual boardings -- I figure they are somewhere less than 100,000 -- and start panhandling for some of that Essential Air Service federal money.
I think they have a good chance at getting a nice big subsidy.
Maybe if they're lucky, that spunky Cape Air might even bid on their service.
Let's just hope the route they propose for them will be to Chicago.
Thanks to J for suggesting this blog.
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