Discussions to land commercial air service at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport have heated up within the past month.
Airport officials are apparently considering an offer from an Atlanta company to provide service to such points as Sanford/Orlando and Tampa in Florida; Tunica, Mississippi; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The proposal was made by Ashley Air and Travel, which airport director Dan Dickten described as a broker that contracts for air service provided by such carriers as Elite Airways.
Elite has proposed providing its own service from Youngstown to Newark, New Jersey.
John Ashley, a senior partner with Ashley Air, said his company would like to begin the service by June 1.
It would be an unusual arrangement in that passengers would be expected to pay a $599 membership fee that would entitle them to fly anytime for $39 per flight.
The service would be provided with 50- and 70-passenger regional jets and operate twice a day four days a week.
This is not the first time that Ashley has pitched flights to Youngstown-Warren airport. He said that since April 2016 he has proposed flights to Las Vegas and Tunica.
The membership model would work so long as Ashley can draw 10,000 to 15,000 people a year.
Ashley noted that Allegiant Air, which stopped flying to Youngstown in early January, averaged about 60,000 passengers per month.
Allegiant was the last carrier to offer scheduled airline service to Youngstown. The airport continues to see periodic charter flights.
Airport officials recently traveled to the Volaire Air Service Forum in Myrtle Beach to try to interest air carriers in providing service to Youngstown.
“We have several potential options to identify renewed service,” Dickten said. “We will elaborate on that at a later time.”
Passenger traffic at Youngstown-Warren has dropped dramatically since Allegiant ceased flying there. In February it handled 438 boardings and 440 deplanements, but most of that was accounted for by the Hubbard band flying to Orlando.
By contrast, in May 2017 the airport handled 6,453 passengers.
The airport recently settled a lawsuit that it launched against Aerodynamics Inc. stemming from its ending of air service between Youngstown and Chicago in 2016 just weeks after it began.
The airport was seeking to recover $361,714 it paid to Aerodynamics as a revenue guarantee when the service began.
ADI filed a counterclaim, demanding the $294,221 it claimed it was owed for its subsidy for the final month of the service.
The parties agreed to dismiss all claims and the Western Reserve Port Authority, which operates the airport, agreed to pay $150,000 to ADI.
Tags: airline service, airline service in Northeast Ohio, airlines, airlines in Northeast Ohio, Allegiant Air, Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport
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