"Arkansas crowd turns out to help woo airline"

Friday, September 27, 2002

Large crowd turns out to help woo airline
SHARON MILLER
The Baxter (AR) Bulletin


The close to 400 area residents who attended Thursday's open house let
Mesa Airlines representatives know citizens here want commercial air
service. 

"If the turnout today is any indication, we're off to a good start,"
Scott Lyon, Mesa's director of community affairs told the crowd gathered
outside next to Baxter County Regional Airport's terminal. 

Now, Mesa executives need to look at numbers and decide if it would be
cost-effective to provide commercial service to BCRA. 

As she introduced Lyon, Gayla Thompson thanked the community members for
being there. 

Mesa, based in Phoenix, has a seven-city government package to serve
Harrison, Hot Springs, El Dorado and Jonesboro in Arkansas, Enid and
Ponca City in Oklahoma and Brownwood, Texas, Lyon explained. For this
service, Mesa is subsidized under the Essential Air Service (EAS)
program. 

One possibility is to link Mountain Home into either Harrison or
Jonesboro using the planes that serve those areas. But those routes are
to Dallas, and history shows the most-used flights out of BCRA before it
lost its commercial air service last September were to St. Louis. Many
were seeking connections to Chicago and the Midwest. 

Citizens in the crowd reflected this preference by asking Lyon during a
question-and-answer session about flights to St. Louis. Comments and
questions about a St. Louis route drew applause. Lyon said Mesa
management would have to look at the numbers and see if such a route
would be feasible. But the area would have to meet a greater financial
burden to have a St. Louis route, he said. 

"The more cities you're putting onto one plane, the less burden there is
per city," he said. 

Lyon told airport commissioners that Mesa is a $500 million company that
is traded on NASDAQ. And it is one of the few regional air services to
continue making money after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said. With 45
planes, Mesa is the largest owner of Beech 1900 aircraft, Lyon said. The
airline serves 21 EAS cities and many others that aren't subsidized. 

The number of boardings is the "acid test" for a market, Lyon told
commissioners, and Mesa management will be studying those numbers for
BCRA. Officials have said BCRA has the fifth-largest boarding numbers in
the state. Lyon said to expect boarding numbers to be about half what
they were before 9/11, but officials from the area said they didn't
think BCRA would be impacted as much as other areas. 

Commission Chairman David Floyd gave a brief history of air service at
BCRA, starting with Continental in the mid-to-late-80s that became Lone
Star. Next was Aspen, then Big Sky. 

In the early 1990s, when Lone Star was running six flights a day, BCRA
boardings topped 8,000, Floyd said. When the airline went to three
flights a day, that number fell to about 6,000 he said. 

He and others meeting with Lyon said the number of boardings for Big Sky
could have been better had the airline been more reliable. Those at the
meeting said retirees, fishermen, golfers, businesses and others would
use a reliable airline. 

Lyon's announcement to the crowd that Mesa has a 98 percent controllable
completion rate drew a round of applause. 

Floyd said he thinks BCRA could eventually reach 10,000 boardings, a
number that would mean $1 million a year in federal funding. 

The commission is continuing improvements at BCRA, with two new hangar
buildings nearing completion and plans for a new crosswind runway and
improved landing system awaiting funding. New overlay and striping of
the existing runway were completed this month. 

Mesa had a 19-seat Beech 1900 available for viewing at Thursday's open
house. As Yvonne Gehrke who coordinates travel for Red Cross disaster
teams perused the aircraft, she talked about how air service would help
those volunteers. She explained that when they return from several weeks
in the field, the last thing they need is a three-hour drive from Little
Rock or Memphis. 

Business and development leaders talked about how having air service
would make travel easier for existing industries and would enhance the
Twin Lakes Area's attractiveness to new industry. 

Floyd promised he and the other commissioners would maintain contact
with Mesa and do whatever they can to bring the airline to BCRA.


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