DATE: Saturday, August 30, 1997             TAG: 9708300429

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE AND JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, STAFF WRITERS

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   61 lines

AIR SOUTH'S BANKRUPTCY DISTRESSES A SOPRANO

The show must go on, even if Air South won't get her to the Met on time.

The bankruptcy of Air South Airlines Inc. left opera singer Carol Meyer stranded in Norfolk and scrambling Friday for another way to get to New York so she could make rehearsals next week at the Metropolitan Opera.

Meyer is one of numerous Air South ticket holders in Hampton Roads who were left in the lurch when the airline shut down Thursday.

Air South declared bankruptcy Thursday in Columbia, S.C., seeking protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code. Under Chapter 11, a company tries to reorganize its finances so it can resume business and try to pay off creditors. Air South's bankruptcy filing showed assets of $11.6 million and liabilities of $67.4 million.

Ticket holders have no protection in the bankruptcy, an Air South official said Thursday.

The 3-year-old airline started flying through Norfolk International Airport in June 1996. Lately it has been offering three flights a day, one midday flight to Atlanta via Charleston, S.C., and morning and evening flights to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

``The biggest concern we have is the New York service because they provided some very competitive rates, and that service was utilized,'' said Wayne Shank, the Norfolk airport's deputy executive director. ``Low rates serve to stimulate the market and bring other fares down.''

Still, Air South's Norfolk presence was small. The airline flew 47,606 people in and out of the airport between January and July, for a market share of just 2.84 percent of the airport's traffic, Shank said.

Air South employs between 10 and 20 people at the airport, including ticket counter personnel and baggage handlers. The local manager could not be reached for comment.

The low-fare airline will attempt to come back in a few weeks to a month, Air South officials said Thursday.

However, the airline will need to get its planes back from aircraft leasing companies that repossessed them Thursday. One such repossession happened at the Norfolk airport, when a flight crew, backed by lawyers, took an Air South Boeing 737 and flew it away, Shank said.

Air South served 10 cities, mostly in the Southeast, and carried about 4,000 passengers daily on its seven aircraft. It employs about 700 people throughout its small system.

The employees' job status is as unclear as how the opera soprano Meyer is going to get back to New York after visiting her husband in Hampton Roads for a week.

Meyer is playing Najade, the nymph, in ``Ariadne auf Naxos,'' the classic opera about Ariadne and Bacchus and love lost, then found.

She'd just like to find a way to get there.

Friday morning, she went from desk to desk at the airport, trying to find an airline to honor her ticket. Unfortunately, her ticket only existed on Air South's computer, which no other airline could access. Since Air South's counter was closed, she called the airline, but got only a recording.

So she's trying to use frequent flier miles to buy a ticket. If that doesn't work, she'll have to drop $269 for a new ticket, roughly twice the price of the Air South ticket.

And if she can't get a flight, she'll go to Plan C. The only problem: ``We don't have a Plan C,'' Meyer said.

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