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Consultant Michael Boyd said that the airport should be focused on business and international travelers, who are less likely to take Southwest. Both airline growth and economic development are driven by business travelers, Boyd said. They travel more on the air networks of the big legacy carriers, Boyd said, and Columbia Metropolitan Airport is well -positioned to keep those customers.
By Mike Fitts
mfitts@scbiznews.com
Published June 29, 2010
Don’t panic over the coming of Southwest Airlines to two other state airports, an aviation consultant told a Columbia audience Tuesday.
Michael Boyd, CEO of the Colorado-based Boyd Group International, told a crowded room at the Midlands Aviation Summit that Southwest will bring solid competition on domestic fares when it comes to Greenville-Spartanburg and Charleston next year.
But both airline growth and economic development are driven by business travelers, Boyd said. They travel more on the air networks of the big legacy carriers, Boyd said, and Columbia Metropolitan Airport is well -positioned to keep those customers.
Southwest won’t put Columbia Metro out of business, Boyd said.
“That scraping sound is not an iceberg,” he said.
In fact, Boyd said Southwest will face its own challenges in getting adequate customers from Charleston and Greenville-Spartanburg to make those locales profitable. Boyd estimates that Greenville-Spartanburg will have to grow its passenger traffic by about one-third to fill Southwest’s planes.
“I think they’re going to have a hard time of it,” Boyd said.
For Columbia, Boyd recommends focusing on business travelers, especially those who travel as part of an international trip. Those passengers, who are up to one-fifth of U.S. air travelers, take air carriers that fly internationally or are part of global air networks such as the Star Alliance when they fly around the United States. They also increasingly drive economic development and job growth, Boyd said.
“It is not whether you get a low fare to go ride Dumbo down in Orlando. The real measure is whether or not somebody from around the world can get here to do a site search,” Boyd said.
Columbia’s links to international flights are strong, because of direct connections to such hubs as Atlanta, Detroit and Charlotte, Boyd said.
The focus should be to encourage the current carriers to bring larger aircraft into Columbia, so that more seats, including low-cost seats, are available.
Columbia fares sometimes can cost a bit more than Charlotte, especially if one doesn’t take into account the cost of the car ride, Boyd said. But that’s really because the smaller regional jets that often serve Columbia Metro are more costly per seat for the airlines. Get bigger planes, and the costs can go down, he said.
A new low-cost carrier might come to Columbia sometime, Boyd said -- even perhaps Southwest. But that’s not likely in the short term, he said.
Overall, the airlines are not adding capacity right now, so Columbia Metro will have the challenge of winning bigger planes away from other destinations, Boyd said. One good sign: Columbia Metro has been keeping its passenger traffic steady, he said.
The airport’s legacy carriers seem interested in ideas about how to compete in Columbia with Southwest, according to airport executive director Dan Mann.
The airport, Mann said, “has some opportunities to show Southwest we can compete.”
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