Joplin airport lands carrier; flights to resume in September

The airport has been without commercial passenger service since Mesa Air Group’s Air Midwest ceased operation on June 30.

Cheyenne, Wyo.-based Great Lakes Airlines announced last week that it would begin serving Joplin with daily flights to Kansas City International Airport on Sept. 8. The company said it will begin service to the airport with 14 roundtrips each week from Joplin to Kansas City on a 19-seat Beechcraft 1900D.

“The Joplin market has shown strong support for service to Kansas City,” said Great Lakes CEO Charles Howell, in a news release. “We will begin with a two-flight schedule on Sept. 8 with the third flight to be added in late October or early November. It is important in today’s economy to have a plan for strong, steady growth to rebuild the service. We will follow that plan as we add cities to our Midwest operation in Kansas City.”

Great Lakes’ Joplin service will be subsidized by the essential air service program administered by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The department awarded Great Lakes a two-year contract to serve the airport.

The department’s decision called for Great Lakes to operate 18 flights each week to Kansas City with an annual subsidy of $997,680, or approximately $542 per flight.

“This was the quickest and easiest way to get started,” Joplin Airport Manager Steve Stockam said. “We all recognize this is not the service we want every day, but it is a starting point.”

Stockam said that Great Lakes has “a good solid plan to build the system” and that the airlines sees the potential to serve multiple destinations from Joplin. “They understand that we shouldn’t be in the EAS program,” Stockam said.

Joplin has among the highest passenger counts of cities participating in the EAS program. Great Lakes has served EAS routes since 1985 and has the ability to provide the airport some stability, Stockam added.

“They’ve been through a lot of these situations,” he said. “They are used to the political side and dealing with Congressional delegations.”

Great Lakes also was selected recently as the essential air service provider for Harrison, Ark. Stockam said the Joplin airport and Great Lakes have discussed adding a fourth daily flight, and that it could tie into the airlines’ Harrison to Kansas City route.

The airline proposed serving Harrison with 12 weekly one-stop roundtrips to Dallas and seven weekly nonstop or one-stop roundtrips to Kansas City. The airline requested an annual subsidy of $1,587,067, or $817.23 per flight.

Great Lakes provides scheduled passenger service at 50 airports in 14 states. The airline has code-share agreements with United Airlines and Frontier Airlines at its Denver, Phoenix and Kansas City hubs. The company also operates hubs in Albuquerque, Milwaukee and St. Louis, according to www.flygreatlakes.com.

In Springfield, airport officials are addressing a setback of direct flights to Cincinnati. Effective Aug. 31, Delta Airlines will no longer run its daily direct flight from Springfield-Branson National Airport to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. In late June, however, the Springfield airport learned it was spared from flight cuts by American Airlines.