By Dan Shaw, Evansville Courier & Press
A question has arisen over the future of flights between Evansville and Indianapolis.
Officials in St. Joseph County, home to South Bend, recently decided to stop subsidizing airplane trips between South Bend and Indianapolis. The company that runs those flights - Cape Air - will soon end them yet hopes to keep its service between Evansville and Indianpolis.
"We love Evansville," said Michelle Haynes, Cape Air director of communications. "The service has been great. We are hoping we are able to stay there."
To bolster the Evansville service, Cape Air is looking at running flights out of other cities, Haynes said. She declined to name which ones. Cape Air, based in Massachusetts, makes a specialty of flying airplanes between remote places and large cities.
The St. Joseph County Airport Authority plans to stop contributing to Cape Air by the end of September, largely because the flights haven't proved as popular as officials had expected. For the airliner to make a profit, and no longer rely on subsidies, passengers would have had to occupy an average of 70 percent of the seats on flights. The highest that number reached was 40 percent, said John Schalliol, the executive director of the St. Joseph County Airport Authority.
"It's not our intent to do this - to start something and then end it," he said. "We just can't put enough bodies on their airplanes."
The service was started in November. Since then, the St. Joseph airport authority has spent about $800,000 in subsidies. Supplementing the subsidies was $500,000 granted by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Besides Cape Air, some of the money went to Chicago Express, a company that had flown between South Bend and Indianapolis before its owner, ATA, went bankrupt.
Schalliol said St. Joseph County officials had experimented with different fare rates, trying to find a price that would lead to profits yet still be cheap enough to attract passengers.
"We are not able to do that," he said.
Dianna Kissel, the marketing director of the Evansville-Vanderburgh Regional Airport, said Cape Air has fared better in Evansville. Half of the seats on flights are occupied on average, she said. That's a promising result, but around 65 percent of seats will have to be regularly filled before Cape Air can turn a profit.
"It's not where it needs to be to be self-sustaining," Kissel said.
About 560 passengers flew on Cape Air in June and 610 in May.
The airport has found it can raise fares and still attract passengers. It now costs $94 to fly to Indianapolis, Kissel said. In March, the trips had costs between $70 and $80.
In Evansville, Kim Devine, the president and co-owner of Action Temporary Service, said it would be a shame if Cape Air decides to cancel the service here. She has used it twice to conduct business in Indianapolis.
The benefits were immediately apparent to her. By car, a trip to and from Indianapolis would have consumed about six hours. Cape Air reduced the travel time to an hour and a half.
"For me it was a nice and inexpensive way - with gas prices they way they are - to be able to fly up to Indianapolis to do business," she said.