There’s only one U.S. state which currently does not have commercial airline service. But that’s about to change, though Frontier Airlines cannot be happy about how the news broke.
If you guessed Delaware, you guessed correctly. Delaware, the first state to ratify the U.S. constitution, is a small mid-Atlantic state with a population of less than 1,000,000. Its main cities are Dover, the capital, and Wilmington. Both Philadelphia and Washington, DC are easily reachable by train.
Wilmington has an airport, but commercial service has not lasted. The most recent airline to try was Frontier Airlines, which ramped up service in 2012 to include Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Fort Myers, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa. Two years later, only Tampa and Orlando remained and the carrier announced it was pulling out, noting Delaware had proved unprofitable.
But Wilmington-New Castle Airport (ILG) announced it will have a press conference today to unveil the return of commercial service to ILG. The airline was supposed to be a surprise, but Governor John Carney let the cat out of the bag by including “Frontier announcement at ILG” in his schedule.
Frontier refused to comment, but the airport authority confirmed that Frontier would return this spring. It also stated that no subsidies or other incentives were offered to lure Frontier back.
So much for the surprise…
CONCLUSION
For residents of Wilmington and other communities, the new service on Frontier will be welcomed and is much easier than traveling up to Philadelphia or Newark or south to Baltimore or Washington. Only time will tell if the market has changed over the last five years to make service more sustainable this time around.
A lot of these small states need to be absorbed in the larger states.
Too many idiots in Congress representing a relatively handful of people.
Montana, Wyoming, Idaho should be one state.
Nebraska, Iowa should be one. We can open the re education camps there.
And all those bunch of teeny tiny northeast states.
I think your tyranny of the majority executive act is specifically prohibited by the following part of the constitution: “[N]o new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
This fits perfectly in the budget airline playbook; don’t pay for expensive slots at the premier airport when there’s a cheaper airport further away from the city center.
The potential downfalls for this idea are:
1) North of ILG (and North of PHL), there’s already an airport for budget airlines (Trenton Mercer – TTN, which Frontier and Allegiant use) with similar accessibility to Amtrak.
2) South of ILG, BWI is perfectly situated for budget airlines, with a ton of Southwest and other non-legacy carriers, and direct access to Amtrak and Baltimore public transit.
I don’t see ILG succeeding unless there’s a shuttle between the airport and Wilmington, and there won’t be a shuttle between the airport and Wilmington unless ILG is successful.
I agree, I struggle to see how this will be successful. PHL is 25 minutes from Wilmington, and from there you have lots of destinations and frequencies.
PHL is in desperate need of expansion and renovation, TTN is a toilet, and BWI is still a 90 minute drive to Wilmington DE.
Considering how many financial companies have major offices in Wilmington, and the fact the EI Dupont is one of the largest chemical companies in the world, I don’t understand why ILG isn’t more popular.
United tried this waaaay back in the day. Late 80’s. They served it with a 737-200 to Chicago. The only reason was for a big marketing campaign they did about flying to all 50 states. I recall reading that they had load factors that were abysmal. Around 20%.
Amazingly, 35 years ago one airline flew to all 50 states.
“In 1984 United became the first airline to fly to all 50 U.S. states with the addition of new routes from Wyoming and Mississippi.”
Since this is a second go of sorts at Wilmington for F9, will this be the demise of MCO service at TTN and/or PHL to take the place of new MCO service at ILG.
The canary in the room is what subsidies F9 receiving for resuming service at ILG?
F9 has a track record of pulling out of cities quite fast when profitable load factors don’t fill-up their planes.
Candidate Biden will be able to “crow” that he now can take scheduled airline service to/from ILG in addition to his travels on Amtrak.
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