Vision Airlines is discontinuing its scheduled flights out of Atlanta, bringing an end to the short-lived service.
The airline's scheduled service out of Atlanta, which began in late 2010, will end after this month, according to Vision director of sales Clay Meek. The airline, which has administrative offices in Suwanee, has been operating flights from Atlanta to Louisville, Ky. and Destin, Fla.
Vision is also pulling all of its service out of Destin, even though it had envisioned that city as a hub.
"There are some other places we wanted to put the aircraft," Meek said. The company, which built up a business in the air charter and tour business in Nevada, operates air tours from Las Vegas into the Grand Canyon, for example. Vision will also continue a charter operation from Atlanta to Biloxi that's managed by the MGM casino. Meek said Vision will maintain its offices in Suwanee.
Vision is still selling seats for flights on some other routes that don't touch Atlanta in March and April, including routes from various cities to Freeport, Bahamas, according to its online flight schedule. But is in the process of considering what its scheduled service will look like going forward, Meek said.
It's a sign of the challenges of Vision's goal, which was to expand in the Southeast and target vacationers. A Vision executive last year said the airline aimed to be "a tour packages company that happens to be an airline."
Start-up airline operations often underestimate the risk involved with operating the service, said Port Washington, N.Y.-based airline consultant Bob Mann.
In a charter business, "the only real risk is making sure you get paid by the tour operator who charters your airplane." Fuel costs are often covered as part of the contract, essentially eliminating the risk of fuel cost increases.
For scheduled service --- like that operated by Delta, AirTran, Southwest and other airlines --- "once you've published a [flight] schedule, you've signed up for all kinds of costs that you're 100 percent at risk for," including expenses for fuel, crews, ground handling, airport leases, navigation costs and reservations system fees, Mann said. The airline then has to figure out how to cover the costs, "one by one as customers book --- seat by seat, day by day, flight by flight."
And a new airline typically underestimates the competitive response from other airlines, he said. "The minute they think their fair share is being poached, they react," Mann said. "The new entrant typically underestimates the severity of that action and then the impact of the competitive response."
Copyright 2012 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
