New partnerships to drive down the cost of travel to and from West Michigan finally are taking flight.
With the impact of the now-defunct Regional Air Alliance of West Michigan still felt, a new group led by Gerald R. Ford International Airport officials and The Right Place Inc. is moving forward with goals to reduce passenger ticket costs and connect the airport to more U.S. markets.
While looking toward the future, officials reflected on the past Wednesday morning at an event inside the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.
The Dick DeVos alliance has been credited for bringing AirTran Airways, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines — “the whopper,” DeVos touts — to market. Before that, the airport struggled with declining passenger numbers and was known as one of the costliest airports to fly from in the country.
Officials claim the same cannot be said today. Month-to-month passenger gains are occurring more frequently, and the airport now hosts more than 30 percent of all its available seats on a low-cost carrier, airport executive director Brian Ryks said.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that fares at Ford Airport decreased 6 percent in 2013 versus increases 4 percent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. And yet another daily, nonstop route to Atlanta will launch in October on Delta Air Lines following American Airlines’ additions in September.
“Is it really worth driving to these other airports?” considering the competition, Ryks asked. “Thank you, Dick, for leading the way.”
DeVos was honored with a Southwest Airlines pilot jacket and a map showing all of the carrier’s routes connecting to other markets. While speaking to the crowd, he joked the irony of the entire situation was not lost on him — as a pilot and aircraft owner himself, he doesn’t take commercial flights.
That was until he took one trip to Miami, just for the experience.
“I walked to the TSA counter…(the agent) looked at my boarding pass, then looked at me, then my boarding pass,” DeVos said. “She goes, ‘So, what are you doing here?'”
Although DeVos won’t oversee the new alliance, he’ll continue to advise some 22 members of the business community as an honorary chair. A continued push for additional air service will be one of the most critical pieces moving forward, he said.
“It is such a critical component to our future for an economic development level, tourism, but to folks who live here and want to live here,” DeVos said. “They need and want to travel.”
Source: Mlive.com
