Switch to new airline leads to more expensive tickets

Talk about it

Jamestown Regional Airport’s transition from Delta Air Lines to Great Lakes Aviation of Cheyenne, Wyo., caused at least one unforeseen consequence — a sudden hike in ticket prices.

The Jamestown Regional Airport Authority and JRA staff are working on getting fares back down to levels comparable with other airports.

“As you know there’s a fare incongruity between us and our main competitors, Fargo and Bismarck,” said Matt Leitner, JRA manager, at the Airport Authority’s meeting Wednesday.

Leitner explained that airfare gets more expensive closest to the date of a flight, and that when Delta customers all rolled over to the Great Lakes flights — and went from a 50-seat plane to a 30-seat plane — it left only the most expensive fares to some destinations.

“So you’ll notice, if you go on delta.com and book a ticket at two months (out), you’ll see parity (between JRA and other airports),” Leitner said.

Jack Clay, airport authority member, said the airport was already losing traffic because of the fare changes.

The Airport Authority discussed using congressional intervention to apply more pressure to Great Lakes to get fares back down.

“I don’t think there was any expectation that the fares would be increased like it has been,” Clay said.

Another factor that may be causing planes to be full is that some flights take off in Williston, N.D., and land in Jamestown before they head to Minneapolis.

“This is unacceptable,” said Jim Boyd, chairman of the Airport Authority, about the price increases.

The Airport Authority and JRA staff will continue to work to get the issue resolved as soon as possible, Boyd and Leitner agreed.

“It seems like there’s got to be something they can do to fix this thing,” Boyd said following the meeting. “I would say that if they are going out of here full, they need to bring in another airplane.”

Sun reporter Kari Lucin can be reached at 701-952-8453 or by email at klucin@jamestownsun.com

Tags: local news, news, airline, airport