January 21, 2009

Kudos to Councilor Rosen

Last night he asked the City Administration for the average loads being carried out of ORH by Direct Air. His answer was similar to that given by the Airport Director. Bottom line is that I hope we are able to improve our loads and that Myrtle Beach is a success.

Keep thinking about the $300,000 of monies that were left in the Small Community Air Service Grant before Direct Air that are now gone. What did we spend it on?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I live close to the airport and every time I drive by on flight days it seems pretty packed. I'm not sure about the numbers, but it seems like people are using the service and I've heard nothing but good things about it.
I hope they keep the service and also add more flights. When are the flights to Myrtle Beach starting?

Anonymous said...

I believe in March...

Harry T
Worcester,MA

Anonymous said...

Bill,

Does it really matter what they spent it on?

If they hadn't spent it, it would have been lost anyway. This way, at least some it went back into the local economy (Telegram & Gazette).

When Councilor Rosen got his answer, did he ask for more detail, or did he let it go? Many times I see the city manager is asked to produce a report for the next meeting.

Bill Randell said...

Steve:

it does matter. I think we only spent $50,000 on Allegiant and now we spend $300,000 on Direct Air? How about saving some of the money and take a big run at Cape Air to provide shuttle service with their code sharing arrangement with JetBlue.

No, no report was requested.


Bill

Anonymous said...

There should be an accounting of where the monies were spent.
Example say someone employed at the airport had a printing business or knew someone who had a printing business who got the contract to print advertising for the airport. Was this the best use of money? Another example could be was there an "advisors fee" or "consultant fee" paid to an individual for let's say $10,000. A report could intiate a request of receipt of what the $10,000 was for and it may have in fact gone to someone who just came up with a slogan "Fly Worcester".
It does matter how the money was spent. "Use or Lose It" mentality is poor business practice.

Bill Randell said...

It was mentioned that MassPort has taken over all marketing efforts. Does that mean that they spent the $300,000 left in the Small Community Air Service Grant as they saw fit?

Ironically I believe the initial application said that some of these monies would be used to offer free or greatly subsidized parking rates. Sorry, I still believe the value we would get by offering free parking to attract fliers would far offset the incremental monies that we receive in parking revenues.

Bill

Paulie's Point of View said...

just flew JetBlue out of Boston this week to Charlotte, North Carolina..both flights on EMBRAER 190's...neither flight had more than 50-60 folks on them..

Anonymous said...

Why can't we get an airline like JetBlue to fly to JFK? wouldn't that be a good deal for the Worcester County, the airline and Massport?
I know fees, loads and politics are some of the reasons, but can't Massport get it done?
This would not affect DirectAir flights at all, since they have non-stop flights to Florida and with JetBlue we could fly anywhere else connecting in NY.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said:

' "Use or Lose It" mentality is poor business practice. '

Anonymous, I hate to sound sarcastic (Jahn Is always positive!)........but if it is poor business practices....couldnt the airport in general be called a Harvard MBA case study for 110% "poor business practice"(s)"

a under utilized asset(s)
b. Overpaid hacks
c. no transparency
d. boarded up control tower
e. no highway access/egress
f. annual $1M deficit for how many decades now?
g. Clueless m'gt
h. others??

And you want to see the use it or lose menatlaity, you should see what the school dept tosses out each August when they have money they HAVE to spend on furniture, etc. Perfectly functional furniture.....a full 28 ft dumpster load of it is toossed annually ..and that's just at one school dept facility.