"Airline bankruptcy filing put small town airport service on hold"

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Airline bankruptcy filing put small town airport service on hold
The Associated Press


MARSHALL, Minn. - Officials from this southwestern Minnesota city are
worried that the city's air service is in jeopardy with the bankruptcy
filing of Mesaba Aviation Inc.

The airport in Marshall recently expanded its runway to accommodate regular
passenger service, which Northwest Airlines Corp. would begin to provide
through Mesaba, one of its regional carriers. Now that both carriers have
declared bankruptcy, the promise of expanded service is gone.

There has never been daily commercial passenger service in Marshall, which
has a population of more than 12,700. Only corporate and chartered planes
use the airport now. And residents who want to catch a flight have to drive
at least 90 miles to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or 150 miles to the Twin
Cities.

"It's almost impossible to get somebody to take you to the airport when
you're 90 miles away, or 300 miles round trip to the Twin Cities. I mean
that person has to be a very close friend," said Jeff Kolnick of Marshall,
who flies about once a month. "Then they have to pick you up again and take
you back. And so just the cost of getting to the airport and leaving your
car is substantial, so if the ticket is a little bit higher still it's OK."

Kolnick said it costs him $80 to $100 just in gas and parking fees each time
he flies.

The city received a federal grant for $480,000 to market and subsidize
regional air service, said Mayor Bob Byrnes. He estimated that as many as
40,000 people would fly out of Marshall each year.

"There's a substantial amount of business in the area that's more than
adequate to support financially the service," he said. "If that business,
for whatever reason that has been projected, isn't there, (the grant)
provides a subsidy to the carrier that was counting on the business that was
in our business plan."

Mesaba, which flies to smaller cities for Northwest Airlines, was scheduled
to start flights to Marshall next April, Byrnes said. But the company filed
for bankruptcy on Thursday, saying Northwest's fleet reductions forced it
into Chapter 11.

Byrnes said the town suffers without regional air service because it is
essential as an economic development tool to attract new businesses. The
airport expansion plan was written to provide better air service for Schwan
Food Co., US Bancorp and Archer Daniels Midland.

Schwan Food Company, which employs 2,300 workers in Marshall, has its own
plane, which shuttles employees daily to the Twin Cities airport. Steve
Linstrom, Schwan's vice president of corporate communication, said the daily
shuttles are for people who do business in Minneapolis or board flights out
of the Twin Cities.

"If we had commercial air service here in Marshall, then we could avail upon
that service rather than transporting those people back and forth," he said.

He did not promising Schwan's would use the commercial airline, though. It
would depend on how much a ticket costs and whether it's cheaper than
running their own shuttle, Linstrom said.


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