BusinessReport.com

Frontier Airlines is the third scrape Baton Rouge has had with a low-cost air carrier in roughly a decade.

This time, at least, the city will have enjoyed six months of low-fare service to Frontier’s Denver hub by the time the airline yanks that service on April 14 over greater losses than anticipated. Before Frontier, Baton Rouge got its hopes up over Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, which announced in March 2004 that it would inaugurate service to Baton Rouge that May.

Spirits were high at the airport press conference announcing the new service. TV cameras were there. Backs were slapped. Speeches were made. Then something went wrong. Anthony Marino, director of aviation at Baton Rouge Metro Airport, was sitting with Allegiant’s president and chairman at the Metro Council meeting where the deal was to be approved.

What nobody expected was the local casino employees on hand to implore the council not to approve the Allegiant deal because it would put their jobs in jeopardy. It didn’t spook the Metro Council, but it did spook Allegiant. A few days later the company announced it wouldn’t be coming to Baton Rouge after all.

Before that it was Spirit Airlines, which was trying to decide between Baton Rouge and Melbourne, Fla. Melbourne had $375,000 in incentive money and Baton Rouge had nothing, so Spirit went to Melbourne, though pulled up stakes again soon thereafter.

It’s all about money, of course, and no city has a hope of attracting a low-cost carrier these days without incentives in one form or another. Even after three relationships that never got off the ground or didn’t work out for whatever reason, Marino isn’t ready to throw in the towel.

“Throw in the towel” is a phrase that comes from old-timey prize-fighting, which has more in common with the fight for low cost carriers than you’d think, even if it involves cash instead of fists.

Baton Rouge had to concede defeat to Melbourne when it had no money to offer as an incentive. Allegiant almost came to the Capital City largely on the strength of $400,000 incentive package. Frontier wouldn’t have come to Baton Rouge without a $1 million incentive—still peanuts in the discount carrier prize-fighting.

Despite the latest disappointment, which came after an extremely hard-won struggle to lure Frontier back to Louisiana after Katrina, Marino says the battle for another low cost carrier is worth fighting. He’s in close talks with another low-fare carrier, in fact, one that serves the eastern U.S.

How much of an incentive it’ll take to land this mystery carrier Marino isn’t saying, except that it’ll take more than $1 million. This carrier is bigger than Frontier and serves more cities, however, and if the deal works Baton Rouge could have new low-fare service this summer, he says. The worst thing the city could do is give up, Marino says.

“Don’t just close the door,” he says. “If we think we’re there and this is all there is, and the status quo is it, then shut it down. You know what you do when you do that? You make a lot of competing cities very happy, because you just dropped out of the competition.”

By federal law an airport cannot offer an incentive to an airline to come. The money has to come from the city, parish, county—whatever. Marino concedes it might be harder next time around to drum up enthusiasm on the part of Mayor-President Kip Holden and the Metro Council to support another incentive package, though he thinks those leaders still get the vision.

“We know now for sure—we knew, but now I think the community knows—you get a low fare carrier in here and your fares are going to drop,” Marino says. “And the thousands of people who flew American, Continental and Frontier for that six month period benefited from those fares.”

It’s a time honored practice among remaining legacy carriers like American, Continental and Delta to slash their fares when an upstart interloper like Frontier dares to crash the market, all in attempt to drive them off so they can raise their fares again, which is exactly what will happen in Baton Rouge after April 14.

That’s a point Marino says he tried but failed to get across to enough people about landing a discount carrier: Use it or lose it. The reason Frontier is pulling out is that far fewer flyers from Baton Rouge than projected have been taking the carrier to Western cities beyond the Denver hub. It’s those connecting flights that make money for the airline. Marino hopes the message gets more traction next time around.

Holden says he still agrees in principle with using incentives to lure a discount carrier, but won’t say how many dollars he would be willing to commit without exploring the particulars.

“We’d have to take a look at the financials, numbers one,” he says.

A low-cost carrier would help the city compete—not just on a state level but nationally, Holden says. It’s important for attracting business and industry and leisure travel, he adds, noting that those involved in the film industry are very interested in direct flights to Baton Rouge, especially if they come from Los Angeles.

Sherri McConnell, director of the state Office of Entertainment Industry Development, says she’s heard from plenty of movie people that a direct flight to Baton Rouge would be highly desirable—especially.

“Anytime you can make it easier to get to a destination from L.A. it makes it easier for them to do business here. Direct flights to New Orleans, direct flights to Shreveport have all been mentioned in our visits with potential producers and those who are coming here on a regular basis.”

McConnell says she’s been using Frontier for flights to the West Coast on official business, and that she’s sorry to see it go.

“It was an easy flight although it wasn’t direct,” she says. “It was probably as easy a stopover flight as I’ve had. Stop in Denver and immediately catch a flight to L.A.”

Marino’s well of persistence shows no signs of drying up, meanwhile, as he continues romancing the next discount prospect. An incentive package should be on the street before too long, he says.

“When you run into an impasse or a problem you can’t just shut the doors,” Marino says. “If this stuff was easy there’d be software doing it.”