A little more than 20 years ago, Ned Homfeld began selling cheap seats on charter flights departing O’Hare International Airport bound for the roulette wheels of Atlantic City.
But gradually Homfeld began focusing more of his marketing efforts on the Northeast, adding day trips from that region to Bermuda and the Bahamas. A decade ago, when Charter One began acquiring its own aircraft, Homfeld found he was locked out of the Chicago market by capacity restraints.
Two years ago, when federal legislation lifted flight restraints at O’Hare, Homfeld and Spirit Airlines didn’t wait. The carrier was the first new entrant knocking on the airport’s door seeking space to launch low-fare service from the world’s largest airport.
Now Homfeld says he’s ready to grow Spirit’s Chicago service.
“We’re flying out of the international terminal. At the time when our flights are leaving in the morning, no one is there,” he said, noting that international carriers launch their flights to Europe and the Far East in the late afternoon or evening. “We are going full circle. Expanding where we started.”
This May, Spirit will add seasonal service to Myrtle Beach, daily one-stop continuing service to San Juan, Puerto Rico, additional daily flights to Orlando and Tampa, and daily service to Los Angeles.
“Our role is to expand the market, and that is what we have done from the very beginning,” he said, adding that Spirit’s flights from Detroit to Orlando have grown 20 percent per year since being introduced in 1993.
Like the discounters that have congregated at Midway Airport, Spirit offers fares that are a fraction of those charged by its brethren in O’Hare’s domestic terminals. But it isn’t likely to challenge the dominance of the major carrier in any of the markets it enters. Spirit’s nine daily flights from Chicago can’t compare with the 614 daily flights that United Airlines will offer beginning in June.
“We tend to think of ourselves as competing with motor homes and Dodge Caravans, rather than competing with other airlines,” he said.
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But Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker says there’s room for more discounters at O’Hare if they’re willing to work around some of the space constraints.
JetBlue, the East Coast discount airline that is turning the New York market inside out, has said it hopes to begin service to Chicago in 2002. A Chicago stop is a logical extension of its current non-stop coast-to-coast service. And it wants to be at O’Hare.
“We could handle several start-ups with modest schedules,” Walker said. “If they are flexible, we can be flexible.”
Bailout called mistake: Darryl Jenkins, executive director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, this week said the airline industry made a mistake when it sought the $15 billion government bailout.
This could turn out to be the “biggest mistake in the history of the universe,” said Jenkins at the FAA Forecast Conference in Washington, noting it may have just postponed the inevitable restructuring.
In one face-to-face confrontation, Jenkins related that one congressman angrily said he just gave the industry “$5 billion and they cut service to my district.”
While Congress saved at least five airlines from bankruptcy, politicians won’t forget the service cuts that were imposed as the airline reduced flights and laid off employees, he said.
Attendants may soon fly: The remaining flight attendants for United Airlines who were laid off in October and have not already been called back to work may soon be returning to their jobs.
The airline and the Association of Flight Attendants on Wednesday reached agreement on a plan that will allow members to take voluntary furloughs for nine months commencing May 1.
The airline has said it will permit only 660 attendants to take time off, the number of flight attendants who are still waiting to be called back to work.