Despite some turbulence, Cape airline performs well

The switch to Contour Aviation at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport hasn't been without some turbulence.

Contour CEO Matt Chaifetz said Friday, Jan. 13, that while the local performance has been slightly below the rest of the airline's system, it has been at or above industry standards.

Contour is approaching three months in Cape Girardeau, officially taking over for former carrier SkyWest on Oct. 18. The switch was necessitated by SkyWest terminating service -- citing primarily staffing issues -- to Cape Girardeau and nearly 30 other communities in the U.S. in 2022.

According to flight data from the start date until the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 11, Contour has had 265 flights in and out of Cape Girardeau with 11 cancellations. In the first three months, the airliner has 77% of flights arriving on-time, 23% delayed and 4% canceled in or out of Cape Girardeau.

While Contour’s on-time arrival percentage companywide is about 90%, the percentage at Cape’s airport is somewhat below that.

"The bottom line is our performance is within industry standards. That being said, there's room for us to improve, and I know that we can because our overall network performance is higher than our average in Cape Girardeau," Chaifetz said.

Cape airport manager Katrina Amos said winter weather systems have been a large factor in the number of delays. Of the delays, 24 were mechanical-related, and 34 were weather-related.

Amos said she's feels confident that service kinks will smooth out over time.

"When you have a very short window of operations, any glitches or any operational deficiencies seem a lot larger, or seem a lot more severe, than if you have a larger timeframe," Amos said.

Contour became the carrier for many of the communities affected by SkyWest cancellation. As a result the airline has had fewer reserve aircraft that at previous points, the CEO said. Contour plans to add seven aircraft to the fleet within the next 90 days.

"What those aircraft do is they provide slack to the system, so, when airplanes need to be rotated out of service for maintenance, there's an airplane to substitute in the network," Chaifetz said.

Contour is working to prevent mechanical issues by hiring a contractor to carry out preventive maintenance on the airplanes that stay in Cape overnight for the next morning's flight. Normally that would be handled by Contour's on-site mechanic the airliner has at each system airport. However, that position has not been filled in Cape yet, Chaifetz said.

From October to 2021 to January of 2022 -- before the airliner issued a termination notice -- SkyWest had a higher rate of on-time arrivals -- 92% -- but also higher rate of cancellations with 12% of flights being canceled under the Utah-based airliner. During the same period, Contour had a flight completion percentage of 94% compared to Skywest's 88%. Chaifetz said he believes that shows Contour's mission to make sure passengers get to their destination even through delays, something he said he and Amos focused on over the holidays.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 77% of flights arrived on-time in 2022 and 2.57% were canceled. The percentage of delays and cancellations in the first month of 2023 is likely to eclipse those figures considering the meltdown of Southwest Airlines at the end of 2022 and into 2023 and a Federal Aviation Association computer glitch that temporarily grounded all flights in the U.S. earlier this week.

While not able to reach the ultimate goal of 10,000 enplanements in 2022, the Cape airport did eclipse 8,000, granting it $600,000 in federal funds.

Social media commentary

Amos also addressed a rumor circulating on social media about the airport. According to the rumor, during Contour's operations, a passenger was allowed to board a flight from Nashville to Cape and had to be helped off the plane upon landing because they were unconscious. The post claimed airport management -- meaning Amos -- was notified of the incident and no report was filed. The airport manager said she had no knowledge of such an incident taking place. Chaifetz also said he had no knowledge of such an incident and that no record of it existed. He added that the safety reporting process is completely anonymous and that there's "no way" an employee would be told not to file a report.

The airline CEO said he was aware of a disgruntled former employee making numerous social media posts disparaging Contour. Chaifetz said the posts contained misleading or outright false statements about the company.