By Carol Wersich, Evansville Courier & Press
EVANSVILLE -- Officials of the Massachusetts-based Cape Air have informed the Evansville Regional Airport the airline will discontinue its Evansville-to-Indianapolis service, effective Aug. 31.
Dianna P. Kissel, marketing director for the Evansville-Vanderburgh Airport Authority District, said the news came as no surprise.
"We suspected this might happen when South Bend (St. Joseph County Airport Authority) recently put Cape Air on notice that it would no longer subsidize the airline," she said.
Cape Air then opted to pull out of South Bend.
The Evansville airport and the airport at South Bend had been both contributing to help subsidize the airline.
The service also was backed by a federal grant, which expires in September.
Kissel said she expects no problem with Cape Air refunding passengers' advance ticket sales.
"They've been a wonderful company to work with," she said.
"For Cape Air to be successful it would need another leg (airport) with the Evansville flights," Kissel said.
Local airport officials have contacted airports in other cities, including Gary, Ind., St. Louis, Mo., and Nashville, Tenn., about becoming a partner.
"But we've been unable to get anyone to sign on to that," Kissel said.
She said the local airport began negotiations about a month ago with an unnamed airline -- that would be new to Evansville -- about providing Indianapolis flights.
Kissel declined to identify the airline, saying the talks were "very preliminary."
"Hopefully, we'll be able to come up with the new service."
Meanwhile, Cape Air had been seeing gains in the number of passengers each month on its flights from Evansville to Indianapolis, according to Kissel.
She said most recently the number ranged from 500 to 600 passengers a month.
But, even so, the figure represented only about 50 percent of total capacity.
"We needed to be around 65 to 70 percent to make Cape Air self-sustaining here," Kissel said.
Frontier Airlines in Indianapolis handled all the Cape Air ground operations there. But they recently gave Cape Air notice that Frontier no longer would be able to do that after the end of August, Kissel said.
Cape Air started serving Evansville Regional Airport last November after the local airport was without direct flights to and from Indianapolis for nearly six years.