Airline starts Lincoln flights to Atlanta and Salt Lake City on Thursday.
MATT OLBERDING/Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Sunday, May 31, 2009 12:00 am
Thursday is a big day for the Lincoln Airport - perhaps the biggest in its history.
That's the day Delta Air Lines starts once-a-day service from Lincoln to Atlanta and Salt Lake City.
"It's a big deal," said Executive Director John Wood.
Such a big deal that airport officials are putting on a full-court press - including heavy advertising and appeals to business groups and travel agencies - to try to make Lincoln residents aware of the service and get them to use it.
The Lincoln Chamber of Commerce has pitched the flights to businesses every chance it gets, said chamber president Wendy Birdsall.
The chamber has come up with an unofficial slogan, "Buy Lincoln, fly Lincoln," playing off its "Buy Lincoln," campaign, which encourages businesses to spend locally on supplies, services and equipment.
"It's so important that people realize the necessity of using the service," Birdsall said. "It really is a 'use it or lose it' deal."
So far, "lose it" seems to be winning.
Wood said fewer than half the seats for June are sold on the once-daily flights. Typically, an airline needs to fill at least 70 percent of seats to make a profit, he said.
Wood said that though that number sounds low, it's "probably not too bad" considering the state of the economy and the airline industry.
"Clearly, we'd like to see it improve," he said.
Steve Glenn, who owns Executive Travel in Lincoln, said Delta will need to tweak the schedule for that to happen.
"The schedules stink," Glenn said. "I think they're going to have to move the flight to earlier in the day for it to be sustainable."
Both flights are scheduled to leave late in the day, which Glenn called bad for both business and leisure travelers because it makes it almost impossible to make same-day connections to other destinations.
He called the flights an experiment for Delta, which has extra capacity due to its purchase of Northwest Airlines last year.
The Northwest purchase gives Delta infrastructure already in place in Lincoln, plus - as is standard with any new service - the airport is waiving landing fees for a year.
"For them, it's a no-cost trial," Glenn said.
Similar "trials" have not fared well at the airport over the past five years.
Northwest started daily flights to Memphis in May 2005 but killed them less than eight months later, saying the flights were losing money. At the time, Wood told the Journal Star the flights were, on average, less than half full.
Northwest service to Detroit fared better, lasting about 4 1/2 years, from June 2004 to the end of 2008. The Detroit flights were averaging a 90 percent load factor, but Northwest still chose to cut them.
Lincoln also lost Allegiant Air in September, after more than 2 1/2 years. The airline moved its twice-weekly Las Vegas flights to Grand Island, saying it couldn't make money despite planes that were more than 90 percent full. The airline said competition from Omaha made it difficult to charge enough to make a profit.
Those losses, combined with other cuts, have led the airport to several consecutive years of passenger losses. Passenger numbers in 2008 were the lowest since the early 1980s.
This year, through April, passenger traffic is down 14 percent compared with the same period last year, largely due to the loss of the Detroit and Las Vegas flights.
Wood and other airport officials are hoping the new Delta flights lead to a reversal of that trend.
Wood said he's "absolutely positive" successful Delta flights would lead to more service at the airport.
But if they aren't, it could be a signal to other airlines that Lincoln is not worth their investment.
"I think this is the community's last best chance for improving air service."
Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.