Story Created:
Dec 8, 2009 at 7:21 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Dec 8, 2009 at 7:21 PM CDT
The friendliest skies in the Central United States are apparently the ones over Springfield.
At a time when fewer people are flying across the nation, more people are flying out of and into the Springfield-Branson National Airport..
The airport here used to lose between 12 and 30% of its local customers to other airports around the region, likely because of ticket prices.
But a recent trend in the airline industry is taking a positive toll on the local level, re-routing passengers to SGF.
The Breshears are frequent fliers, even more frequent now that they're moving to the west coast.
"We'll be back here for Christmas, the first day of school. We'll be back here often," Mike Breshear tells us.
The couple have five children and eleven grandchildren in the Ozarks.
That's 16 reasons to be back often.
This time Mike is flying out for final move preparations, and he's taking off from Springfield- a travel trend the family expects to continue.
"We used to travel to Kansas City to fly out but it's so far and traffic and everything so we decided to look online and see what kind of other options we could get, " Melody Breshear explains.
The Breshears nixed MCI and also Joplin, closest to their home in Lamar.
"Travel times out of Joplin were a bigger issue for us. It was 13 hours to get to where we were going."
With a layover Mike can be in his destination city from Springfield in six.
Plus the Breshears say the ticket price was reasonable.
Airport officials agree.
"We really saw fares begin to drop in the spring," says Kent Boyd with the Springfield-Branson National Airport.
That's across the country, but in Springfield that's translating into bigger crowds.
"They have negative numbers in St. Louis, Kansas City, Northwest Arkansas, Tulsa, other good-sized airports in the region. So we find ourselves alone- we're up 5% for the year." (
The airport attributes a good portion of its growth to a discount airline that offers cheap fares to vacation destinations.
In fact, the airport speculates Allegiant Air's deals are stimulating what's being dubbed a "reverse flow."
"I know we have people coming here from St. Louis and Kansas City to fly, which is unheard of," Boyd tells KSPR.
The Breshears came here instead of those larger cities. "
They weren't quite as pleased with the cost, but pleased enough to make SGF their family connection.
We did a little cost comparison, and even with Allegiant the prices are very hit or miss.
It was still nearly $75 cheaper to fly out of Kansas City to Los Angeles on United this month than to the same destination from Springfield.
; "Click for StormVision Doppler Radar")
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