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Airport Director Looks to Add Flights to Las Vegas
VIENNA TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- What will the director of aviation at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport do for an encore?
Even before Doug Dickten announced Tuesday that Allegiant Air would begin twice-weekly service between Youngstown-Warren and Punta Gorda/Fort Myers, Fla. Oct. 30, he was working to add service between the regional airport and Las Vegas, Nev., the airport and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the airport and Phoenix/Mesa, Ariz., and the airport and Chicago.
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Dickten advised a packed boarding area at the terminal -- a room filled with officeholders or their representatives and reporters -- as he concluded his remarks.
Shortly before Dickten’s press conference, the president of Allegiant Travel Co., Andrew C. Levy, was in the Punta Gorda airport terminal also announcing the service, the fourth nonstop flight Allegiant Air is providing between Youngstown-Warren and other airports it serves.
The service between Youngstown-Warren and Punta Gorda-Fort Meyers offers an introductory $89.99 one-way ticket. A 163-seat aircraft will fly the route, the director of aviation announced. “We’ve been after this destination for two years,” he said.
Levy also announced that Allegiant would soon begin services between Punta Gorda and seven other cities: Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, Iowa; the Quad Cities; Springfield, Ill.; Bangor Maine; Allentown, Pa.; and Asheville, N.C., plus service between cities in the West.
A host of elected officials and bureaucrats with brief comments followed Dickten, all saying all the right things appropriate for the significance of the day.
Success has a thousand proud fathers and mothers but most kept their remarks brief or declined the opportunity to comment: two Trumbull County commissioners, Frank Fuda and Dan Polivka; Mahoning County Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti; state Rep. Sean O’Brien, D-Warren; representatives for U.S. Sens. Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown; a representative for U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson; Kathy Zook, program manager of the Eastgate Council of Governments; George Ross, general manager of Winner Aviation (Winner provides all ground-handling services at the airport); Randy Reynolds of the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, which has a campus near the airport to train aircraft mechanics; James Pirko, president of YNGAir Partners and acting chairman of the Eastgate citizens advisory board; Vic Rubenstein of Rubenstein & Associates, a marketing agency; Eric Planey of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber; and last, Rose DeLeon, executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority, who wrapped it up in a sentence, “I think everything’s been said.”
In an interview afterward, Dickten said the Western Reserve Port Authority built its case for the new route with Allegiant by having a high occupancy rate on the flights the airline has to and from the airport, a rate of 90% to 95% -- “butts in the seats,” as the director of aviation phrased it.
That builds credibility for the airport as the port authority makes its case with Allegiant for flights to Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale and Phoenix. While Dickten was willing to say he’s working with an airline for service to Chicago, he wasn’t reedy to identify the airline (except to say it isn’t Allegiant) and that such a route would be primarily for business travel. Allegiant’s business model is focused on leisure travelers.
The president of YNGAir Partners, Pirko, said afterward his private-sector organization is close to receiving its 501(c)3 nonprofit status that would allow it to conduct fundraisers in support of the airport.
For the airport to be eligible for federal matching funds, he explained, the private sector -- not local governments -- must come up with the match. To obtain the $780,000 federal grant to help upgrade and improve the airport, the private sector must raise $420,000, Pirko explained.
“There’s a need for business flights” to and from the airport, Pirko said, and YNGAir would use federal funds, along with those it raises, to that end.
One fundraiser under consideration is sponsoring a concert at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown and directing profits to the match, Pirko said.
Considering YNGAir’s role in persuading Allegiant to come to Youngstown-Warren and add flights since, Pirko can back his claim, “We’re seeing results. We’ll see more. We know our next big objective. Big challenges bring big rewards.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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