BY KEITH BENMAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
kbenman@nwitimes.com
If there was a silver bullet in Bishop International Airport's turnaround, all fingers point to AirTran Airways.
"They've been the catalyst," said Bishop International Director Jim Rice. "And No. 1 is they're just a great airline."
ValuJet Airlines flew out of Bishop International as a low-cost carrier in the mid-1990s and was swallowed by AirTran in 1997. At the time, AirTran operated much like Southwest Airlines, with open seating and deeply discounted fares.
Other airlines sat up and took notice of AirTran's ability to get large numbers of passengers direct to its hub at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, which regularly runs neck-and-neck with Chicago's O'Hare for the title of world's busiest airport.
AirTran's success was particularly noticed by Northwest Airlines, which flies direct to Atlanta from Detroit and was a bitter rival of AirTran in the upstart's formative years. Northwest quickly added more flights from Bishop International to Detroit Metro in order to keep its connecting flights to Atlanta full.
In 2005, Northwest was Bishop International's leading carrier, snaring 42 percent of passengers. AirTran was second with 38 percent. The airport served 1.1 million passengers total that year.
"Other airlines were not going to let them (AirTran) have the whole pie," Rice said. "But instead of running people out of business here, they just made the whole pie bigger."