Low Airfare 'Not Just a Wichita Issue'
The story of how low-cost air service helps improve Wichita's economy is being written in some unusual places.
Like Hesston.
Thirty miles north of Wichita on Interstate 135, cheaper plane tickets subsidized by the city of Wichita have helped produce the largest freshman class in the last 16 years at Hesston College.
And it has helped the manufacturing facility run by AGCO Corp. stay competitive by making it easier for company personnel to travel there for training.
"It's not just a Wichita issue," says Hesston Mayor John Waltner.
Expanding low-cost air service at Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport will be a top priority for city and county officials during the 2006 Legislative session, which starts in January.
Local officials intend to ask the state to pay for 80 percent of the $6.25 million annual subsidy plan, or $5 million a year for the next five years. Local governments would contribute $1.25 million each year.
Waltner, co-chairman of Wichita Visioneering and chairman of the legislative committee for the Regional Economic Area Partnerships, sees low-cost air service as a major infrastructure issue for communities like his, as well as for Wichita.
Perhaps the best example of this is at tiny Hesston College, a two-year, private Mennonite school, which recruits 70 percent of its students from out of state.
"We have to cast a pretty wide net," said Clark Roth, vice president of admissions at the college.
"We have to get them to visit. If they don't visit, they don't come," he said.
Most out-of-state students don't come to the college from states that border Kansas but are recruited from Mennonite areas in states as far away as Oregon and Ohio.
If the college can't fly prospective students into Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, Roth said, it has to land them in Kansas City, where a student must rent a car and drive three hours to reach the campus, or be picked up by campus official. Either way adds time and expense to the process.
Nor does it help sell the students' parents on the college if they see that trips to visit their kids will be expensive and long.
It works the other way, too. The college has five counselors who have to fly out frequently on recruiting trips, Roth said.
Low-cost airfares through the Wichita's Fair Fares program with AirTran Airways has reduced $840 tickets to $280 or $320, Roth said.
"It has been such a relief for us to afford to fly them into Wichita," he said.
This year, Hesston has its largest freshman class in 16 years. Roth said he can't link that increase entirely to lower air fares in Wichita, but he knows it helps.
"You bet it does," Roth said."... We had more visitors, and the more we have visit the campus, the better it is for us."
The same benefit can be seen at AGCO Corp.
When the Duluth, Ga.-based company put a large manufacturing plant inHesston, it asked the city to pursue lower airfares because it constantly brings in people to train.
Waltner said that during the company's transition, it had to fly people into Kansas City and transport them to Hesston, a process so cumbersome it added a couple of days to the length of a trip.
Hesston also needed a good motel and a full-service restaurant to help meet the company's needs.
The city secured an AmericInn Lodge and Suites two years ago. A Gallaway's restaurant opened last year.
That's good for AGCO, but it is also good for the community as a whole.
"Little by little we've been able to accommodate some of those things," Waltner said.
"We really want to see the affordable airfares program be successful."
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