SAVOY — An experiment to bring a discount carrier to Willard Airport cost the University of Illinois about $117,000.
As part of its contract with Vision Airlines, the university agreed to a revenue guarantee that promised the UI would pay the airline up to $34,425 per round trip if the airline did not sell enough seats on flights between Savoy and Charlotte County Airport in Punta Gorda, Fla.
Atlanta-based Vision Airlines announced last October it would offer twice-weekly flights to the Florida airport, north of Fort Myers, from Dec. 19 through the end of March. The airline kicked off the flights in December, but the airline's presence at the University of Illinois airport was an abbreviated one.
Before the flights even began, the university confirmed Vision's flights to Florida would end Jan. 6 — three weeks into the schedule — because planes were unavailable to the carrier.
Although some of the initial flights were full or close to being full, the remaining flights had few passengers, prompting the university to pay the airline.
"For a variety of reasons, this particular service with this airline did not meet expectations," said Bruce Walden, director of real estate services for the university, which owns the airport. "We continue to review what might make sense for this market and hope to work in the future with the broader community, much as Bloomington-Normal has done recently, to pursue air service opportunities," he said.
After Southwest Airlines bought AirTran, the airline announced it would pull out of Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington- Normal. Organizers with the McLean County Chamber of Commerce's Community Air Service Initiative raised nearly $500,000 to attract other carriers to the airport. And earlier this year, Allegiant Air announced nonstop jet service between Bloomington and Sanford, Fla., northeast of Orlando. Frontier Airlines also recently announced it would offer flights to and from Denver and Orlando later this year.
The announcement of new air service to Bloomington quickly followed Southwest's announcement that it would end AirTran service there, said Seamus Reilly, a Parkland College administrator who co-chairs the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation's airport committee.
"In order to do that requires money, a marketing plan," he said.
Such incentives are not unheard of for regional airports. In 2004 the University of Illinois and other community organizations offered Delta a $1.35 million revenue guarantee for the airline's first two years serving Willard.
Last year, the Champaign County Economic Development Corp. hired Sixel Consulting to review options for the airport's future. Suggestions included creating an airport authority or making the airport a department within a city or county government, or having a private company, the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District or regional planning commission, manage the airport.
No plan has been drafted for the future of the airport, Reilly said, but the group of people talking about it will grow. In order to support Willard Airport, it will require larger involvement of the community, he said.
"We're interested in expanding the number of people in the conversation about what are the possibilities for supporting the airport," Reilly said.
In the meantime, beginning in April, American Eagle will add one more daily flight to Chicago from Willard Airport, according to Walden.
This story appeared in print on March 11.
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Sounds like a good time to shut the lights off & lock up.
Drop in the bucket of the tax payers money. Oh well. Sounds like a plan that wasn't thought through well enough. Time to move on.
Remember to add to this number the cost not only to UIUC, but the two communities when Delta pulled out as the two-year clock on offered incentives went "ding."
A nifty idea would be to consult the City and County Engineers through the City of Urbana Mayor's office in conjunction with the CCRC and build a gigantic roundabout so everyone can land and take off in total harmony and Hanson Engineers will have their cake and slice it too!
As long as Willard Airport continues to be operated by the U of I, each and every endeavor it attempts will end as a lesson in futility. Had this airport been managed by a proper airport authority, it wouldn't be losing out to Bloomington (BMI) like it already has and continues to do.
Several years ago when the airport was doing well, they had a professional airport manger and a professional marketing director. Neither of these two individuals had any academic background in regards to higher education. They were business professionals, not academic administrators trying to be a airport manager or marketing director.
Hire a professional airport manager from another successful airport and a marketing director from a sucessful airport and perhaps additional airlines would come and stay.
It is recognized the parking charges bring in a lot of revenue. However many flyers go to other airports that have free parking. It has never been tried to provide free parking at Willard, but perhaps a 6 month trial of free parking would be worth a try. Perception is reality sometimes and this may be the case with charging for parking at Willard.
It is opined there are many UI faculty, administrators and staff that use airports other than Willard. Require them to provide cost comparisons to include their time, university car cost or mileage reimbursement, lodging sometimes at the other airports and any other charges they do not have when flying from Willard. It is believed if all travel from a airport other than Willard required a vice president or above to approve such travel, Willard would have much larger numbers for passengers using the local airport. It would be interesting for the News-Gazette to do an article on this topic to include research on travel vouchers for travel from airports other than Willard.
You can read a recent airport study commissioned by the Champaign County Economic Development Commission here
http://www.champaigncountyedc.org/airport-study-released [15]
It is really so simple...free parking will draw more passengers, which will draw more carriers. Look at Bloomington; half of CU drives to Bloomington because of the free parking!