urbanSTL

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Jan 09, 2020

St. Louis to try again for European flight
https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... s_headline

Lambert airport officials are working with business groups to try to lure a direct flight to Europe.  A St. Louis Lambert International Airport spokesman, Jeff Lea, said Wednesday that Airport Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge told airport commissioners she's "working with organizations in the region to potentially develop a new plan to help land an international, trans-Atlantic flight."  "However," Lea said, "we won't be able to share details of those discussions or organizations at this time."  People familiar with the matter said Civic Progress, comprised of area CEOs, and AllianceSTL, the business recruitment arm of the St. Louis Regional Chamber, would be among those assisting, and that the process is in its early stages.

St. Louis lost European flights after American Airlines discontinued a London route in 2003. Lambert had nonstops to Iceland, an island usually considered to be part of Europe, from May 2018 to January 2019, when WOW Air ended the service. The airline later shut down.  The St. Louis County Port Authority in July cut a program that would have given up to $5 million to an airline willing to start a direct flight to Europe. The port authority's chair, Denny Coleman, said then that the program was ended because the business community had not also agreed to prebook tickets on a route, seen as critical to landing the service.

Last month, anna.aero, a British website specializing in airline routes, published an analysis saying St. Louis and Cincinnati were among the most likely U.S. airports to add British Airways service in the future.  "Both have strong fare per miles as a result of their higher business travel (reflected in higher average fare), above-average passengers to London, and good traffic to Europe," the piece said. "And both have strong metro GDPs: $161 billion for St. Louis, the nation’s twenty-second largest, and $138 billion for Cincinnati, the twenty-ninth. Cincinnati is also 115 miles from Columbus, another city with good demand to London and wider Europe."  Several metropolitan areas that are smaller than St. Louis have direct European flights, including New Orleans, Nashville and Cincinnati, which already boasts a flight to Paris on Delta Air Lines.

Airport Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge told the agency’s board Thursday that she is working with “the business community” and other local governments to build a fund to help lure an international airline to St. Louis.

A British Airways flight to London or a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany, are the most likely connections, she said. Lambert doesn’t have any interest in using the package for a non-major discount carrier, Hamm-Niebruegge said, such as now-defunct Wow Airlines that briefly operated here.

She declined to say what other private and public entities Lambert officials were seeking commitments from. Lambert hopes to have a package ready to present to airlines by the beginning of April to be able to present to the large European airlines, which typically announce the addition of midsize market routes in the late summer...Lambert would require an airline to commit to two years of service before offering the incentive package, she said. The hope is the subsidy would let the route become established enough to stand on its own in a smaller market...About 300 people a day on average fly to Europe from St. Louis, with the largest proportion going to London, Hamm-Niebruegge said. St. Louis also tends to have more business travelers, which are airlines’ “bread and butter.”