CEO tweets hint that airline has plans to offer service to Savannah
A little more than a month after Savannah’s airport made a Top 10 list it could live without — fourth-highest fares among the country’s top 100 airports — help appears to be be on the way?
In a tweet sent Thursday afternoon, JetBlue Airways CEO David Barger said, “Hmmm! Savannah’s 3-letter code is SAV — seems like an airline should add new service and “SAV” customers from high fares, right?”
Hmmm! Savannah's 3-letter code is SAV - seems like an airline should add new service and "SAV" customers from high fares, right?
— Dave Barger (@DavidJBarger) September 12, 2013
That set Savannah buzzing — not to mention re-tweeting and reacting — about the possibility that an announcement could be on the horizon.
Neither JetBlue nor Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport officials would confirm an impending announcement.
JetBlue spokesman Loren Duran would neither confirm nor deny a possible renewed interest, offering only that the airline “has nothing to say at this point in time.”
Airport executive director Greg Kelly was equally vague.
“We agree that it would be great to have an airline come in and help us with airfares,” he said Friday.
JetBlue has been prominent on the Savannah Airport Commission’s radar for at least the last three years. In the summer of 2010, airport and tourism officials from both sides of the river made the trek to JetBlue headquarters in New York to talk about why they think Savannah and the carrier are a perfect fit.
The following year, airport executives returned to New York with a proposal that included a comprehensive two-year incentive package worth more than $2.5 million for four daily flights, most likely to New York and Boston. Visit Savannah and the Hilton Head/Bluffton Chamber of Commerce also offered a number of marketing packages.
While federal law forbids airports to pay airlines to come into their market, they can offer across-the-board incentives to prospective airlines — such as waiving landing fees and terminal charges for a period to help the airline get established locally.
Local entities, such as Visit Savannah, can also offer marketing packages that would be mutually beneficial.
While JetBlue didn’t think the timing was right for Savannah, instead announcing that it would move into the Charleston, S.C., market, Savannah’s leadership refused to be discouraged and continued to woo the low-cost carrier.
In February, air service consultant Brad DiFiore told the airport commission that, if they hoped to attract a low-cost carrier to Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, they needed to be rooting for JetBlue to be successful in Charleston.
“JetBlue is still a great fit for Savannah in terms of business model and network,” said DiFiore, managing partner of Ailevon Air Service Consulting in Atlanta. “JetBlue customers are generally more discriminating leisure travelers than other low-cost customers, and its network would focus on the key Savannah markets of New York and Boston.
“The recent addition of Charleston indicates an interest by JetBlue in our kind of market,” he said. “JetBlue’s success in Charleston should bode well for Savannah.”