"Better air service sought for Pueblo airport"

Thursday, September 7, 2006

Better service sought for Pueblo airport
The Pueblo (CO) Chieftain


The Pueblo Airport Advantage campaign, aimed at increasing use of Pueblo
Memorial Airport, is pushing hard to get an early morning flight to Denver
for business travelers, but so far it's in a holding pattern.

Dave Cardinal of the airport advisory commission said Wednesday that he has
visited with Charles Howell, CEO of Great Lakes Aviation, to beg for a
better flight schedule.

Howell's office is in Cheyenne, Wyo., and when Cardinal visited with three
other Puebloans, "he asked us if we flew up," Cardinal said. "We said, 'No,
because we would have had to go up the night before the meeting, buy dinner
and stay in a hotel, and then come back to Pueblo about 1 p.m.' "

That's the biggest issue handicapping the Pueblo airport now, Cardinal
added. On Monday through Friday, Great Lakes offers flights to Denver at
10:05 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Weekday flights to Pueblo from Denver arrive at
10:15 a.m. and 5:20 p.m.

"If you're a business person, you need to be going out of Pueblo at
something like 7:30 to 8 a.m., and you'd like to be coming back after 5
p.m." he said.

"I call this a lousy schedule. Chuck Howell calls it a less- than-desirable
schedule. We're really pressing him hard to give us another schedule. We'd
like to reschedule, but if they were able to give us an additional flight,
we'd like to see an early morning, a midday and an evening flight. If it's
just to reschedule the two we have, we'd prefer an early morning and a
return flight that could stay overnight and then turn around for the
outgoing morning flight," Cardinal said.

Howell gave no promises of being able to change the flight schedule, though,
citing a shortage of available aircraft, Cardinal said.

Monica Taylor, Great Lakes marketing director, told The Chieftain that the
company doesn't have the equipment to reschedule or add a flight to Pueblo
at present.

"We do realize the schedule is less than what we would like or what the
community would like, and we do see the improvement in numbers, so it's
definitely on our radar," she said. "But we just don't have the equipment
right now."

Cardinal and Jim Carter, another member of the advisory commission, have
been working hard - and successfully - to increase Puebloans' awareness of
their hometown airport and the advantages of flying from Pueblo rather than
driving to Colorado Springs or Denver.

"Our emplanements increased 130 percent in July. In fact, we had boarded as
many people through July as we had all last year with Mesa," Cardinal said.

Great Lakes took over from Mesa Airlines in December.

"Their service has been very good," Cardinal said, which is one of the
selling points for the Pueblo Airport Advantage campaign. Other service
providers in the past haven't been so reliable, and a lot of people got out
of the habit of flying from Pueblo, he said.

Local boarding numbers dropped so low, in fact, that Pueblo was in danger of
losing its "essential air service" subsidy from the federal government.

"If we lose that, we could lose our FAA tower and then we could lose the
National Weather Service station - there's a whole list of reasons why you
don't want to lose commercial air service," Cardinal said.

Great Lakes flies a 19-seat aircraft in and out of Pueblo, and Cardinal
quips in his pitch: "You have an aisle seat and window seat all rolled into
one." He's got a bunch of lines, actually. Another one is, "You will never
have more than 18 people ahead of you in line."

More seriously, a big advantage of flying from Pueblo is that you can clear
security in that line of no more than 19 people, and not have to go through
the mile-long maze in the Mile High city.

Plus, you miss the drive through highway construction sites and the parking
fees at the airport, whether in Colorado Springs or Denver. Pueblo's parking
is free, "and we have no known case of anybody losing their car at the
Pueblo airport," Cardinal said.

Attached Photo:

Dave Cardinal

bizDaveCardinal.jpg