September 09, 2005

Allegiant's Pease Agreement

Pease Development Authority (PDA) will spend $100,000 in a cooperative marketing




partnership with Allegiant Air to highlight the new service and the airport.
The PDA will also waive Allegiant’s landing, passenger and counter fees at Pease for two years.

Allegiant will begin flights between Pease and Orlando’s Sanford International Airport on Oct. 28. Squyres said the airline plans to run one round trip four days a week (Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday) on 150-seat McDonnell Douglass 800 series jets. Pease is the second airport, Newburgh NY the first, in the Northeast selected by Allegiant to serve the Orlando market.

A 35-page proposed agreement has been exchanged between the PDA and Allegiant. A final two-year agreement that could be extended to five years could be signed within the next month. PDA deputy director David Mullen said that the waiving of landing and counter fees was standard for the industry. "Airports don’t make money from (flight) operations. They make it from parking and concession sales that come" from passenger traffic. Mullen believes that the arrival of Allegiant could lead to "a priming of the pump" for more carrier interest in Pease Airport.


Allegiant could provide serious competition to Pan Am Clipper Connection, the only other commercial passenger airline operating out of Pease, which has attempted to develop a low-cost flying market. But since its arrival in 1999, Pan Am Clipper Connection has flown inconsistent flight schedules to various cities. Last week Boston & Maine, the owner of Pan Am, said that skyrocketing fuel prices will force the shutdown of its Boeing 727 operations - and flights between Pease and Orlando - for more than two months beginning in early September.
In the 1990s, Business Express airline provided regular passenger service until it ceased operations in 1996.

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