Flying from a one horse town...

SCSU Scholars links to this article on small airports closing becuase no airline wants to fly from them.

Interestingly, many of them got or are trying to get federal subsidies. Yup, the federal government wants to use your tax money to fly small planes to crappy old airports (they are all turbo-prop -only airports, probably because they are too small and the runways too short to support jets) that not enough people want to go to to make it worth flying planes to.

I know a few of the areas mentioned in PA, mostly because I drive that way to visit my parents. For example, Reading PA is on the list. Reading is probably less than an hour away from the Harrisburg Airport, which actually has real airlines, and is probably less than two hours from BWI and Newark. Why would they need their own airport, and why should the federal government pay for them to have it?

The article has this quote: "It's a matter of economics," says Joyce Opp, Lancaster airport's finance director. "There have been countless studies that show that communities that have air service fare better economically."

I wonder if Joyce and the study are confusing cause and effect. Maybe it's that places that have businesses and tourist attractions that people want to fly to, and people who can afford to fly, are better off to begin with, and that's why they have air service.