Phoenix Mesa Airport

I personally have flown into Phoenix Airport at least twice, but have never flown into an airport in Mesa, Az. currently known as Williams Gateway. To take Jahn's lead, students if you were running Williams Gateway, what would you change the name of your airport to?? If you said Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport then you would have gotten an A. Check out this story.

Read the entire story from AZ Central.com but consider this one Section:

"Using a variety of scenarios based on trends and experiences at other secondary airports in the country, the firm projected a yearly passenger boarding count of almost 5.1 million on the high end and more than 1.3 million on the low side. Either figure represents an astronomical climb from the nearly 19,000 commercial airlines passengers who flew out of Williams Gateway during the fiscal year that ended June 30. "

In the past I have said 100 times that we should model ourselves after Rockford, now we may saying Phoenix-Mesa as a model airport. Here is where it gets even more interesting, do you remember when Allegiant use to only have one destination city--Las Vegas? Then they added Sanford (outside Orlando), followed by St Pete's (outside Tampa), followed by Fort Lauderdale and guess what students is their 5th destination city? If you guessed Phoenix-Mesa then increase your grade to A+. Right now Allegiant flies from 12 cities to Phoenix-Mesa.

We really blew it with Allegiant. Their whole model was patterned on secondary airport, but where secondary airports like Sanford, St Pete's, Rockford and Phoenix-Mesa were able to get on board and make the numbers work, we missed big time.