THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 23, 1996 TAG: 9605230395
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 88 lines
A young airline offering $49 one-way flights to New York and low fares to other destinations will start service from Norfolk International Airport on June 20.
The airline, Air South, announced the new service Wednesday.
In addition to New York, Air South will offer daily direct flights to Chicago and Jacksonville, Fla. It will serve Miami with a stopover in Jacksonville.
Air South will start with one flight a day to New York and Chicago, and two to Jacksonville. It expects to add more flights and possibly destinations before the end of the year, said Dennis Crosby, Air South's vice president of airline services.
``The plan is to grow really rapidly here,'' Crosby said. ``It all depends on our reception here.''
Based in Columbia, S.C., Air South is trying to mimic the success of low-fare airline pioneer Southwest by offering inexpensive fares on point-to-point flights. With no frills, no unions, streamlined management and flying just one kind of jet, Southwest blossomed into a major carrier in the western United States.
Air South chose the Norfolk airport over other airfields, including those in Richmond and Newport News.
It will lease one of five available gates at the airport, said Wayne Shank, deputy executive director of the Norfolk Airport Authority.
Air South's plan is to provide service from underserved Southeastern cities to big markets in Florida, the Midwest and the Northeast.
The new service should stimulate competition and business at the airport.
The only other low-fare airline in Norfolk is AirTran Airways, which only flies to Orlando, Fla. ValuJet serves the region from Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport with flights to its Atlanta hub.
USAir and other airlines with competing flights will likely match Air South's fares soon, airport and airline officials said.
``We are really excited about this,'' Shank said. ``It's not just the new service and the new markets, it's the fares. This is a fare sensitive market.''
The airport's experience with People's Express in the early 1980s and recently with CALite, Continental Airlines' low-fare experiment, show the region's appetite for low fares, Shank said.
``If you get the fares down, people will fly,'' he said.
Air South and other low-fare airlines have seen their reputations tarnished recently by speculation about their safety following the tragic May 11 ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades.
In its two years of operation Air South has had no accidents.
Airline consultant Michael Boyd called the safety uproar ``hogwash.''
Recent comments by the Federal Aviation Administration have ``thrown mud on any airline that just serves peanuts,'' said Boyd, president of Aviation Systems Research Inc. in Golden, Colo.
Nearly all the accidents on low-fare airlines since 1990 have involved ValuJet, Boyd said.
``We operate to the very exact same standards as all of the major airlines,'' Crosby said.
While Air South looks for ways to keep its costs down, it doesn't skimp on aircraft maintenance, Crosby said.
Air South flies a fleet of seven leased Boeing 737-200s. The average age of these 122-passenger jets is 20 years, he said. That age is typical of 737s flying for other airlines, he said.
``The old airplane argument is stupid,'' Boyd said. ``Air frames were designed to last for decades.''
``The key is: Are the aircraft maintained to proper standards?'' Crosby said.
Air South's pilots have an average 25 years experience flying, he added.
Air South had been flying principally between markets in South Carolina and Florida until recently. Since March it has expanded its focus to include service to big markets in the Northeast and Midwest.
``What they're talking about in Norfolk really makes sense, at least,'' Boyd said. ``Norfolk's a market where you put in a low-fare service and you're going to attract some business.''
Air South also announced Wednesday that it will soon begin service from Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C., to New York, Chicago, and Columbia and Charleston in South Carolina.
With little other low-fare service in Norfolk, Air South's competition, for now, will principally be from the big airlines.
``If you only have one or two flights a day, the competition's not going to mess with you much,'' Boyd said. ILLUSTRATION: Color Graphic by Robert Voros/The Virginian-Pilot
Source: Air South
Air South's One-way fares
[Where Air South flights to various cities.] by CNB