Want More Air Service To Your City? Be Smart About It

When airline network planners and airport officials get together, it’s typical and appropriate that at least one side is hoping for more air connectivity or frequency—perhaps both.

That seeking of more air service, especially coveted nonstops, is a recognition that convenient and competitive flights bring people and goods, trade and wealth to a city and its neighboring region economies.

It’s therefore important that governments and local authorities are actively involved in supporting the expanded air service quest. If governments don’t truly understand and support what’s needed to attract more airlines, any talk about slots is just that: talk.

To convert new air service talk to reality, airlines typically look for key incentives. Some are difficult to change: the size of the catchment area and mix, tourism versus business, for example. But other factors can be adapted, including airport infrastructure: are the terminals, runways, and ATC systems modern, efficient, well-managed? Are security and immigration processes easy and fast to use; do they leverage technology and automation? Do available slots work within an airline’s greater network, especially its hubs? Can airlines feed those hubs from the potential additional traffic of a new destination?

Perhaps biggest of all for airlines: what are the taxes and fees policies of the city or country in which the airport is based? Where governments have an aviation vision to grow their air service and economies, they will invest in modern infrastructure and minimize taxes and fees on airlines and air tickets. Airlines can then reduce their fares, be more competitive and grow the number of passengers they bring to a destination: most of whom will buy goods and services during their stay. The money still comes in.

Airlines, by necessity, must consider their alternatives when selecting new destinations and greater frequency. The global aviation industry supply chain crisis means airlines all over the world are not getting the aircraft, engines and parts as soon as they expected. So airlines are being more scrupulous than ever before about where they place their resources. The destination must allow them to be consistently profitable.

And passengers have shifted their focus since the pandemic on what they want from their flight and destination. They are making different, often more upscale choices. They are more willing to go further afield and try something new. They will likely start with a comparison of air fares. If, because of taxes and fees, a more distant and exotic destination is about the same price, that may be enough to sway their choice. If they can go nonstop and the immigration process is hassle-free, the decision will be made.

Airports and governments have enormous power to make sure that destination choice is in their cities.