Metro Airport can’t recoup any of the money it spent on incentives to bring Vision Airlines to Baton Rouge. Vision announced last week it was stopping service to Metro Airport on July 15, about three and a half months after the airline initiated flights to Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Fla. Jim Caldwell, an airport spokesman, says Vision’s incentive package didn’t include any upfront cash payments. Instead, the airport agreed to feature the airline in its existing advertising campaigns and waive landing fees and some rental fees. The total value of the incentives was $600,000. “Everybody offers those kinds of incentives, they’re part and parcel of the deal,” Caldwell says.
It’s difficult to calculate the specific amount of advertising Vision received from the airport, since the incentive package called for the spending to be spread over two years. “Vision bought quite a bit of local cable ads on their own,” Caldwell says. Vision plans to stop its flights to Las Vegas and Destin-Fort Walton Beach in two weeks. Vision, which offered heavily discounted fares, was hurt by high fuel prices that hampered its attempts to offer profitable regular fights from Baton Rouge to Nevada and Florida. “They wanted to take Destin, which is a drive market, and turn it into a fly market,” Caldwell says. Once the low initial fares of $19 to Destin went away, Caldwell says, the airline had trouble attracting passengers who were willing to pay the regular one-way ticket price of $89.—Timothy Boone
