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REVIEW SUMMARY
Industry. Tourism
Trend. Discount airlines pick smaller airports
Key. The Charlotte County airport could become the next transportation hub when the economy recovers.
Gary Quill says he's got a unique airport business model.
The Charlotte County Airport Authority doesn't charge any fees to passenger airlines. He can afford to do that when the airport is debt free.
And travelers have taken note. At the height of the tourism season in March, passenger traffic at the Punta Gorda airport from two low-cost airlines totaled 28,534, up 90% from the prior year.
While that's nowhere near the 996,000 passengers who passed through Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers or the 161,000 who traveled through Sarasota-Bradenton International airport in the same month, it's enough traffic that the small, passenger-friendly airport is getting good reviews as an alternative.
Parking is plentiful and inexpensive, the terminal is cozy, lines through security are short and passengers climb on and off the airplanes on stairs outdoors. “The word has spread from Bradenton to Naples,” says Gary Quill, executive director of the Charlotte County Airport Authority.
The Punta Gorda airport is 35 miles from Southwest Florida International and 62 miles from Sarasota-Bradenton International, but Quill says he's not interested in direct competition with either airport. “There's room for three airports,” Quill says.
Two discount airlines currently serve the Punta Gorda airport: Allegiant Air and Direct Air. Both fly nonstop jets weekly to destinations that range from Kalamazoo, Mich., to Knoxville, Tenn., bringing tourists to the Gulf Coast.
Quill acknowledges that the leisure traveler is the airport's primary customer. “We don't think our location works for business travelers,” he says.
On and off the Skybus
Punta Gorda landed on the passenger-airline map when Skybus started regular service with bright orange jets in December 2007. That first month the Columbus, Ohio-based airline flew more than 15,000 passengers.
By March 2008, Skybus was carrying more than 40,000 passengers a month from Punta Gorda to northern cities before high oil prices shut down the airline.
Skybus was a coup for the small airport because it indicated that there was demand for service to Punta Gorda. It helped that the airport doesn't charge the airlines any fees, relying instead on rental-car and parking fees.
Quill runs the airport like a business, joking that the no-frills passenger terminal is like the Wal-Mart of airports. By October, the airport will be debt free, he says. More than 2.3 million people live within a 90-minute drive.
That doesn't mean the airport isn't improving operations. State money is funding the construction of a new, $4 million control tower, for example.
The last Skybus flight left Punta Gorda on the day of its annual air show, which draws thousands of spectators to watch military and civilian stunt pilots perform aerial acrobatics. The airline filed for bankruptcy in April 2008, the victim of spiking oil prices.
But passenger service would not be stalled for long. Charter airline Discount Air began weekly service to Punta Gorda in November 2008 and Allegiant Air started flying to Charlotte County in March 2009.
“These markets are underserved,” says Sabrina LoPiccolo, manager of public relations for Las Vegas-based Allegiant, which flies twice a week from Punta Gorda to Knoxville, Tenn., and Greenville, S.C.
LoPiccolo says the airline considered flying out of Sarasota or Fort Myers, but chose to operate out of Punta Gorda strictly based on cost. It partners with hotels such as the Marco Beach Ocean Resort on Marco Island, South Seas Island Resort on Captiva and the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota.
Allegiant, which also flies out of St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, does very little marketing in Florida. Instead, it shuttles tourists from smaller regional airports from outside the state, taking a cut of hotel and rental-car sales. “We're a travel company that happens to own an airplane,” LoPiccolo says. On average, its planes are more than 92% full, according to its last system-wide traffic report.
Niche airport
Quill has no plans to try to build the Punta Gorda airport into a giant discount-airline hub for what he dubs the “Saramyers” area that extends from Sarasota to Collier county. “With our layout, we're good for 20 flights a day,” he says.
Quill says he'd be satisfied with 10% of the passenger traffic in the region. Until that happens, the airport has no plans to borrow for a costly expansion. “It's our niche and we need to stick with it,” he says.
Fort Myers and Sarasota airport executives say the Punta Gorda airport hasn't taken meaningful passenger traffic away.
Victoria Moreland, director of public affairs for the Lee County Port Authority, says the Punta Gorda airport attracts airline service that wouldn't consider Fort Myers anyway and is complementary. “It becomes good for the region,” she says.
Every major airline except for Alaska Airline flies into Fort Myers. More than 7.4 million passengers passed through the Fort Myers airport last year compared with 129,000 in Punta Gorda. More than 1.3 million passengers used the Sarasota airport in 2009.
“It's very hard to tell the impact of something coming into another market,” says Michael Walley, director of development and community relations for the Sarasota airport. “Charlotte is closer to Fort Myers and Fort Myers has a lot more capacity than we do,” Walley adds.
Transportation hub
Punta Gorda's central location next to Interstate 75 between the Sarasota and the Fort Myers-Naples areas hasn't been lost on companies that use ground transportation either.
Publix Supermarkets has spent $1 million building roads and utilities to the 87 acres it bought from the airport a few years ago. While Publix says plans for the site are on hold, Quill is confident the supermarket giant will start building a 600,000-square-foot distribution center the size of 10 football fields when the economy recovers.
Meanwhile, the county is widening Piper Road, the major road leading to the airport. The airport owns about 1,600 acres, 900 of which are prime for development. Several other tracts of land are available, such as the Airport Park of Commerce, but sales have been slow lately, brokers report.
“Thank God for the airlines,” says Quill, who estimates commercial real estate sales around the airport could be stalled for next two to five years.
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