DOT: Decision on airline for Cape airport to come soon

The deadline has passed, and all the recommendations are in. Now the waiting game begins for Cape Girardeau and five other cities eager to learn which airline will provide subsidized commercial passenger service for their communities.

The U.S. Department of Transportation intends to act quickly to award contracts for Essential Air Service providers that will fly from six cities in Missouri, Illinois and Iowa, said Bill Mosley, spokesman for the department. There's no deadline for the decision, but the contracts are set to begin Nov. 1.

Cape Girardeau, along with Marion/Herrin, Ill., and Quincy, Ill., are asking the department to award their contracts to Cape Air, the Massachusetts-based carrier that specializes in moving people from small communities to metropolitan airports in nine-seat Cessna 402 aircraft.

Cape Girardeau Regional Airport manager Bruce Loy said he expects the department to go along with the city's choice. That expectation is stronger, he said, because Cape Girardeau isn't alone in choosing Cape Air.

But there's no guarantee, Mosley said. "The community preferences are major factors, as is the record of the carrier, how well it will provide service and the relative subsidy amounts."

The Essential Air Service program supports commercial passenger flights in smaller communities through direct taxpayer subsidies to carriers.

Great Lakes Airlines currently provides two round-trip flights daily to St. Louis but has failed to attract substantial numbers of passengers. Great Lakes is the provider for all six cities being awarded, but it only asked to retain two locations. No airport is asking to keep Great Lakes.

Cape Air is promising four round-trip flights daily to St. Louis, with an average ticket price each way of $50. Loy said he has already been working with Cape Air on a possible schedule and has money ready to market the new service when it is launched.

"Just as soon as it is awarded, we will get together very quickly," Loy said.

State funding will allow the airport to match Cape Air's planned marketing campaign to launch the new service, Loy said.

The Department of Transportation originally set Sept. 16 as the deadline for all six communities to make recommendations. That deadline was extended to Wednesday. The two cities that asked for the extension -- Decatur, Ill., and Burlington, Iowa -- wanted air service to Chicago and are asking the department to award their contracts to Air Choice One of Farmington, Mo., Air Choice One is offering both cities two flights daily to Chicago and two flights to St. Louis.

"We judged them as having the most reasonable opportunity to get us into Chicago," said Joe Attwood, manager of the Decatur airport. Decatur was the only city sought by Cape Air that did not select the Massachusetts carrier.

The sixth location in the offering is Fort Leonard Wood, the Army base in Central Missouri. The cities served, Waynesville and St. Robert, recommended Gulfstream International Airlines, a company that had sought all six contracts.

A spokeswoman for Cape Air, Michelle Haynes, said her company will be ready to begin service Nov. 1 if chosen. "We are not doing any chicken counting yet, but we are very, very gratified about the initial support," she said.

A major portion of Cape Air's business is seasonal, taking passengers from Boston to islands such as Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and flying people to Caribbean islands. That business is dropping off, she said, freeing aircraft to assign to the new Midwest routes.

"We are nimble and we are flexible, and we move very quickly," Haynes said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

Cape Girardeau Regional Airport, Cape Girardeau, MO