Benet Wilson writes that Chicago Rockford International Airport, an airport on Chicago’s far western fringe with limited commercial service, is going to partner with a charter airline (actually, a brand — Southern Skyways) to offer scheduled services to Denver and Detroit, the former to replace service United is withdrawing this summer. Rockford will control routes, destinations, and fares, and will eat the losses. As Benet points out, this is a bad idea.
Regular airlines are struggling, and low-performing routes are getting cut. If Rockford can’t supply enough traffic to Denver when the route is a regional jet and has interline connections, how will it generate sufficient traffic with a larger plane and no connecting opportunities? Well, it will operate less frequently — a few times a week. Says the airport’s director: “You’ll see as many flights as you can fill.” That’s just the problem — there will be so few flights that being unable to fill them will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rockford says it’s doing this to prove what a good market it is to other airlines. Yes, it’s such a good market that United is leaving. The trouble with the fund-your-own-airline-service strategy is that Rockford is creating a different type of service than it’s trying to replace or recruit. It’s best to get connecting service to major hubs — the airport is already served to cheapo leisure markets by Allegiant. But the Southern Skyways service won’t resemble the connecting hub service the airport claims to need: the aircraft types and sizes, schedules, and traffic feeds will be completely different.
Rockford’s taken a bad idea too far. There are better ways of recruiting airline service.
Rockford Airport Gets into the Airline Business [Towers and Tarmacs]
Evan Sparks's Aviation Policy Blog 
Maybe it’s a bad idea. Maybe not. The United service was half-hearted at best. Airport Director Bob O’Brien has many years of experience in commercial aviation. The proposed Denver service may be a bit questionable. The complementing Detroit service should do well as there are a considerable number of automotive concerns, including large automobile assembly plants, in the area. Also, you failed to mention that there are about 750,000 people within a half hour drive of RFD. And over 2,000,000 within one hour. That’s why Allegiant has been doing quite well. United did well until they started hiking the fares, supposedly because of the fuel costs.
Mr. Knauss:
Thanks for dropping by!
Your use of the word “supposedly” in the last line raises my eyebrow — as if United didn’t really cancel the flight because of fuel costs but because of some secret anti-RFD bias. But since United had to hike fares because of fuel costs, presumably the RFD-sponsored Southern Skyways service won’t hike fares in order to boost load factors — making it all the more likely that the service will bleed airport cash.
I used to fly a regional turboprop into Rockford for Midway Airlines years ago. But we flew to Midway Airport, as we did from about 10 other cities with 200 miles of Chicago, not ORD. I also worked for FAA at RFD Airport for years and watched plenty of airplanes come and go.
Forgetting for a moment that our cost equation at Midway Airlines got way out of whack, our planes were full most of the time with people who wanted a decent connection that Chicago could provide and did not want to travel through ORD.
What no one has mentioned is that one of the largest competitors to regular air service at RFD is not another airline, but the bus.
There’s a coach service that leaves RFD Airport every hour during the work week and drops directly at all ORD terminals. Takes just over an hour and it costs $18.
On time, almost rain or shine at a very inexpensive price.
Delays in and out of ORD are why I believe the new entrants airlines at RFD have probably tried other cities.
Now if someone started serving Midway and connecting to Southwest, especially with ATA gone, I’ll bet it would work.
But I’m not an airline economist. What do you folks think?
Rob Mark