BusinessReport.com

For an airport accustomed to struggling to assert its identity, things are looking up for Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport.

Metro Airport has a new airline, a Coca-Cola plant and official validation of its existence through a regional study—all within the same month.

For years, Metro Airport—code name BTR—has operated amid criticism that its flights were too expensive, its location too inconvenient or that it was too irrelevant with Louis Armstrong New Orleans International an hour or so away.

Now BTR has its first low-cost carrier, Frontier Airlines, which begins daily nonstop service between Baton Rouge and Denver on Aug. 14. In theory, a low-cost carrier exerts downward pressure on all airline fares in a market.

Before Frontier’s announcement, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and Baton Rouge Area Foundation released the results of a regional airport study that said investing in BTR made more sense than mothballing the Baton Rouge and New Orleans airports and replacing them with a regional facility twixt the two cities.

Frontier Airlines was one of two low-cost carriers to pull out of Armstrong after passenger volumes fell off dramatically after the hurricane. Had Katrina not dislodged Frontier, chances are slim Baton Rouge would have been able to—not that Marino wasn’t trying.

It became easier after the Metro Council authorized Mayor Kip Holden to extend a $1 million incentive package. Technically the offer was open to any airline flying nonstop to Denver, which just happens to be Frontier’s hub. “We think it’s going to be a wonderful marriage,” Marino says. “The proof will be in the pudding.”

He says projections that passengers would come from as far as the Lake Charles and Lafayette markets helped convince Frontier to come to Baton Rouge.

Of the $1 million incentive, $400,000 will go to subsidizing the airline for two flights a day for one year—730 flights a year and about $550 per flight. If a flight is cancelled because of weather or some other reason, Frontier doesn’t get the money. The rest will help pay for things like landing fees, rent, flight crew accommodations, advertising, data system hookups and fueling fees.

“It worked extremely well,” Marino says. “Frontier coming back into Louisiana itself is a triumph, but let’s don’t stop here. There are others on the horizon.”

Now that Baton Rouge has a Far West U.S. hub, Marino is after a low-cost East Coast service. AirTran Airways flies to more than 20 cities on the East Coast from its Atlanta hub. AirTran still flies to New Orleans, but Marino is working on them. Expect another $1 million incentive to sweeten the pot.

U.S. Airways and Allegiant Air are also contenders. Allegiant announced in 2004 that it would offer Baton Rouge to Las Vegas nonstop flights but changed its mind, blaming poor ticket sales. Marino says griping from local casinos scared them off. Allegiant went to Shreveport instead, inaugurating service there in 2006. Marino hopes to have another carrier signed by the end of the year.

Holden says the Metro Council is game to hook another carrier with incentives.

“We work as a team,” he says. “We know that if Baton Rouge is really going to take its rightful place with other cities, then we have to go out and bring air service into Baton Rouge to make it more appealing to conferences coming in.”

Marino says he feels validated by the conclusions reached in a six-month study of the regional airport market. The study determined the best hope for maximizing airline service in the area is to expand BTR rather than replace it with a regional airport between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

The study found that meager gains in customer service weren’t enough to offset the extraordinary capital costs associated with building a new airport to serve the New Orleans and Baton Rouge regions. “Our argument has always been to modify existing infrastructure, not to go and build a new airport,” Marino says.

Ground was broken in April on a new Coca-Cola bottling plant on land 112 acres leased from the airport at $2,000 an acre. BTR will get $224,000 a year. The airport also plans to build another parking garage and expand its terminal area. Marino is counting on $45 million from a federal aviation bill that goes before Congress in October, noting that roughly $230 million has been spent on airport improvements the past nine years.

The BRAC-BRAF study shot down the idea of a regional passenger airport for the foreseeable future, though state agencies have gotten behind studying a proposal for a multimodal cargo airport near Donaldsonville.

The Louisiana Airport Authority has been pushing the concept for years against seemingly insurmountable odds, though lately the idea has gotten enough respect from state economic development chief Mike Olivier that he’s recommending the so-called Louisiana Transportation Center Phase II project proceed with due diligence.

In addition to the ongoing study by the Canadian firm SNC-Lavalin, the state has hired New Jersey consultant Back Aviation to study whether the project is worth injecting state money.

Marino has always hated the idea and says BTR has plenty of cargo capacity. The state should shelve the LTC dream already, he says.

“It keeps sending a signal nationally that says you guys are not serious,” Marino says. “You’re taking about something people in the industry know can’t happen. Our philosophy is simple: We are the nucleus to infrastructure and economic development.”