N.D. cities look to lower airfare

Talk about it

Jamestown Regional Airport Authority Chairman Jim Boyd and JRA Manager Matthew Leitner joined a conference call with officials from two states, seven lawmakers’ offices and four cities — all hoping to get Delta Air Lines to decrease airfare prices to airports receiving federal Essential Air Service money.

Four airports receiving the federal funds — Devils Lake, N.D., Huron, S.D., Watertown, S.D., and Jamestown — are now served by Great Lakes Airlines, of Cheyenne, Wyo., but previously were served by Delta.

From those EAS airports, fares that were listed on delta.com increased sharply after the transition between the two carriers. Since then, they have been trying to pressure Delta to get ticket costs back down to rates comparable with competing airlines.

The conference call was hosted by North Dakota Aeronautics, and was attended by South Dakota Aeronautics, as well as the offices of the governors of North Dakota and South Dakota, Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad, and Republican Sen. John Hoeven and Rep. Rick Berg, all of North Dakota, and Democrat Sen. Tim Johnson and Republican Sen. John Thune, both of South Dakota.

The group decided Conrad’s office would try to set up a meeting sometime in the next two weeks with the aeronautics and congressional groups with the U.S. Department of Transportation and representatives of Great Lakes and Delta.

“We see it as a Delta issue,” Boyd said. “The objective here is to get all the parties in the same room to discuss the issue and hopefully they can come up with a solution.”

Tags: local news, airfare, news, local, airport, jra