Airport bidding deadline is Friday

By Michael Sewall

Published Feb. 26, 2008

While the Columbia Regional Airport continues to struggle, interest in providing flight services to Columbia remains high from Great Lakes Aviation, based in Wyoming.

Mesa Air Group has provided service since it outbid Great Lakes in 2006. But Mesa announced in January that it would end its service on April 20, barring that another provider did not fill the void by that time.

“We will continue to recruit stable, suitable air carriers for this region,” City Manager Bill Watkins said in a Jan. 22 news release.

The city might have found that air carrier, if Great Lakes wins the bid Friday, and it is approved by the city and the U.S. Department of Transportation, Great Lakes spokeswoman Monica Taylor said.

Great Lakes services 44 cities in a 12-state region and is looking to expand.

“We’re going mostly from West and Midwest states and moving in both directions,” Taylor said.

She said Great Lakes, which has just been awarded service in multiple cities in Montana and California, is short on aircraft and getting the Columbia contract could help with that problem.

“We’re looking to possibly take over that if we’re able to find the aircrafts to do so,” she said. “We’re looking at all the options to acquire more. Therefore, we’re trying to get more communities to justify how many we need for future expansion.”

Taylor said Columbia fits the prototypical community Great Lakes serves, and the air service has been successful in the communities it has served.

“People know that our service is going to be reliable,” she said.

While Great Lakes has been looking to expand its business, Mesa has been forced to reduce its own, which is a problem seen in many Midwestern communities, Columbia spokeswoman Toni Messina said.

“We’re getting subsidized service through the federal government,” Messina said. “That has allowed Mesa to serve this area, but it’s also not enough to continue business.”

Since last summer, Mesa cut flights to St. Louis, leaving Kansas City as its only airway partner, and significantly raised its ticket prices.

MU spokesman Christian Basi said certain university officials have been working with the city to discuss wants and needs in the community airport, but he had no further knowledge of the progress.

Taylor said Great Lakes usually takes a contract “as is,” and that the airline already has a hub in St. Louis and Kansas City and would begin with flights to those destinations. There has been discussion among city officials to expand the destinations offered at Columbia Regional, Messina said, including Chicago and Dallas.

“That seems where people can go to get connections nationally and internationally,” she said. “There’s nothing tied down but there’s some general feeling those would be good.”

Taylor said because Great Lakes does not yet have hubs or flights to Chicago or Dallas, for instance, it would need to increase the number of passengers to take that “risk.”

“We’d need to have some supporting factors to show it’d be successful,” Taylor said.

With a large number of out-of-state students at MU, including many from the Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth areas, increased destinations could potentially benefit students, Messina said.

“That’s pretty limiting, and there may be students that want to make connections at other airports,” she said.

Taylor said Great Lakes is focused as a business airline, but that it always tries to consider student interest.

“We will take the student into account if we arrive in Columbia, and we’ll talk to the university and see what the need is there,” Taylor said.