Greenville-Spartanburg Airport

Great story on Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport is courting at least five low-cost air carriers. They seem to be in a similar position as ORH leaking from their catchment area to Charlotte. Here is the link for the entire story here are some parts:

* "The quest for a low-cost carrier is an ongoing quest," airport spokeswoman Rosylin Weston said. "We are not operating in a vacuum. The three people at Greenville-Spartanburg who share the task of landing a low-cost carrier are airport director Gary Jackson, GSP's chief financial officer Jack Murrin, and Weston. Jackson has been with the airport for about 20 years, while the others were hired in 1999.

Their strategy is one of networking, marketing and synthesizing efforts with economic development projects -- though none of those will work unless an airline thinks servicing the Upstate would be profitable. In other words, airlines want to know they'll have passengers. And timing is everything........

* Though Allegiant doesn't substantially increase the options a flyer has out of GSP, if it is successful, it can be used as a tool to lure other low-cost carriers. As Gibbs puts it, "It gives you another arrow in the quiver, so to speak. It's a demonstration that low fares really generate traffic, that a carrier can come in and be successful." "With the low-cost carrier, a big part of the case is to show that traffic has been underdeveloped because fares have been so high, so that if a low-cost carrier came in, it would stimulate a great deal of traffic," he said.....

* He also accompanied the GSP team to Denver-based Frontier Airlines in early November. Frontier has no immediate plans to announce flights to GSP, airline spokesman Joe Hodas said.
Frontier meets with hundreds of communities each year, he said. This year, only four or five new destinations were added. Next year, because of the purchase of about 10 regional jets, Frontier likely will add about 15 new markets, Hodas said. "It was a good meeting," Gibbs said. "I think they were very impressed with the area, the underlying population, the economy. They have a lot of opportunities. They are besieged. There are many more airports seeking low-cost service than there are carriers......"

* Greenville-Spartanburg employs "a number of consultants," Weston said, including those who specialize in seeking new airlines or the expansion of existing air service. Like Gibbs, they provide information that GSP officials can use to make the airport here attractive to airlines. But no one has been hired to specifically make calls or pitch GSP on the airport's behalf. And, anyone can pay for a study to make an airport look good.

"Sometimes (airlines) want to talk to you about your city and your community, and they don't care about the numbers," said Bob Uhrich, director of air service development at Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport.