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Feb. 5--BRIDGEPORT -- The North Central West Virginia Airport may soon be offering regular charter flights to Florida.
Wednesday, despite concerns expressed about the adequacy of the runway at the airport, the Benedum Airport Authority officially authorized a trip to a three-day conference in Las Vegas to meet with officials from Allegiant Air and discuss starting twice-weekly charter flights to Orlando.
Joan Keith, director of marketing and business development at the airport, said she and airport director Jim Griffith will be traveling to the conference next week and discussing a future partnership with the Vegas-based airline.
"We will get an opportunity to meet one-on-one with the planning department of Allegiant Air to state a case for serving this area by providing marketing and operational data," Keith said.
The marketing and operational data will be provided by an outside consultant and will map out in detail why Allegiant should begin chartering flights out of the regional airport, Keith said.
And Wednesday, with the official authorization for the trip already in place, board members voted to only pay the $5,000 consultant bill contingent on Allegiant's acceptance of the deal.
This decision came after members discussed the venture and voted down a request to cancel the trip when board president Ron Watson and several other members expressed concerns over a letter Allegiant recently sent to the airport authority.
Watson said the letter stated that the North Central West Virginia Airport's runway is not equipped to accommodate Allegiant's plane series every day of the year. Watson entertained a motion to cancel the conference trip, with his main concern being over the bill for the consultant.
"I want to remind us to be fiscally responsible," Watson said. "There are other ways to open up dialogue without being right there."
Griffith, Keith and several board members had different ideas, though, especially with the option of offering the consultant payment on a contingency basis, and the motion was voted down.
Airport Engineer Chad Biller explained that Allegiant's main concerns with this airport are with the local temperatures, the length of the runway, and several obstructions in the flight area. But he said that these types of planes have flown out of the airport in the past and still can, just not every single day of the year with full passenger loads, which is the standard Allegiant is going by.
Biller also said he does not agree that these concerns are a reason to deny charter flights at the airport, but he said he understands the concerns of the company.
The completion of a runway safety project, which should be done sometime this year, should also help to accommodate these planes, Biller added.
When complete, the project should help with the obstructions in the flight area, he said. And while the design plans are currently 100 percent complete and have been submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there is no exact timeline for the completion of the project.
Allegiant charters flights all over the country, and currently has an agreement with Huntington's airport offering charter flights to Orlando, which Keith said is working out well.
The local airport has also worked with Allegiant in the past. The company recently chartered a flight to Charlotte, N.C., for the West Virginia University bowl game, and while some members had concerns with some of the details, the trip basically worked out.
Keith added that if the local airport strikes this deal with Allegiant for a year it will guarantee the facility will meet the 10,000 passenger goal set by the FAA for annual facility funding.
Keith also said that this potential deal will not prohibit the airport from taking on additional charters because it will be only one of the four total that are permissible at the facility.
"It's the more the better," she said.
E-mail Mallory Panuska at [email protected].
