If such things were not becoming a common practice in the air transportation business, then news that Buffalo Niagara International Airport is offering up to $400,000 in payments to airlines that offer new nonstop flights to certain key cities might feel like desperation -- or an example of how we're so ugly our parents had to tie a pork chop around our neck to get the family dog to play with us.
But such incentives have become par for the course in the airport business these days. It is about the only way a city that isn't already a major hub for a significant airline can hope to draw nonstop flights to and from the cities that people actually want to go to.
And that is what Buffalo needs, saving time and money for locals, attracting passengers from a wider area and appealing to businesses that might be more interested in locating or expanding here if such flights were a given.
The airport's operator, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, is dangling payments of up to $400,000, paid out over four years, to any airline that adds a new nonstop route from Buffalo to Denver, to the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers or to any of three particular airfields in Southern California.
To get the money, the airline would have to lease a new gate at the airport, offer at least 100 outgoing seats per day on the selected routes and keep them going for at least two years.
The NFTA figures it will make back its investment through the normal fees paid by the added passengers who will take advantage of the additional routes. Even if it doesn't, it will have provided a boost to the area's overall economy.
Easy access to other parts of the country is a prime attractant for far-flung businesses. And increasing the number of direct nonstops out of Buffalo can only help the airport improve its on-time performance for arrivals and departures, as a smaller percentage of the airliners our passengers are waiting for will be backed up at regional hubs.
Speaking of delays, the NFTA also earns praise for rolling out a new system that will help passengers be aware of delays and plan accordingly. A new service, which anyone can sign up for at www.nfta.com, will send e-mail or text messages to inform those registered when a flight is delayed, when it has arrived or when a parking lot is full. The same service will also dispatch messages about changes and delays on the NFTA's bus and Metro Rail services.
In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to pay airlines to better serve Buffalo and we wouldn't have to devote so much energy to working around airline schedule mess-ups. But this is hardly an ideal world.
It wasn't so long ago that the NFTA believed its responsibility to the public was to see that planes took off and landed safely; its actions now on broader improvements in service and cost deserve praise. It's good to know the NFTA and its airport are working to do the best they can with what we've got.
