Dayton Int'l Airport Commission Expected to Vote on Proposal to Attract Flights

Dec. 21--DAYTON--Dayton's airport wants to offer incentives to encourage airlines to add or start new service.

Airport officials want the authority to waive for up to six months the landing, gate and plane-parking fees for new startups or new non-stop flights to and from Dayton International Airport. The City Commission is expected to vote on the proposal today.

The practice is one that is growing in the industry and has been used by other regional airports to compete for service from the flurry of new, low-cost carriers. Dayton already has such an abatement in place with Frontier Airlines, which in August began two non-stop flights a day between Dayton and Denver.

But it puts at risk the airport's chief revenue sources that pay for runway and airfield updates and repairs.

It is a tradeoff that backers of the Dayton airport say is needed. "If you did it all the time it would be (a risk)," said Stanley Earley, Dayton's assistant city manager. "It's part of getting a new service and you recognize you're not going to make any money on it for six months." Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said incentive packages like this are helpful, but that the demand has to exist for the flights to make economic sense long-term.

"An incentive doesn't do us a whole lot of good if we use it for six months and don't build up our traffic to the point where we can sustain the service," he said.

If the commission approves the proposal, the deal will be on the table for any airline that provides new, uninterrupted, continuous and non-stop passenger flights from Dayton for a minimum of six months with at least one flight a day.

The effort comes as Dayton's airport is trying to respond to a downturn in passenger use. Through October, passenger boardings were down 15 percent for the year.