Westmoreland airport officials target Sunshine State tourists

As the clock ticks down toward a court date that could decide the fate of JetBlue’s proposed purchase of Spirit Airlines, local airport leaders are hoping to lure some Florida residents to the Laurel Highlands.

Westmoreland County Airport Authority Executive Director Gabe Monzo last week announced his plan to establish a “sister city” partnership with Orlando, Fla., in an attempt to attract tourists from the Sunshine State to Western Pennsylvania.

“We would like to do some marketing in Orlando, and in trade, bring people up here to Laurel Highlands,” Monzo said.

The Arnold Palmer Regional Airport’s commercial carrier, Spirit Airlines, offers daily direct flights from the Unity airport to Orlando and seasonal daily flights to Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Monzo said he plans to apply to the GO Laurel Highlands’ tourism grant program, as an Orlando partnership would generate interest in the region and golf legend Arnold Palmer’s legacy.

This year, 44 organizations were awarded a total of more than $549,000 in grants to promote tourism in Westmoreland County. The funds come from the county’s 5% hotel tax, as 60% of the tax is allocated to GO Laurel Highlands, an agency that promotes tourism in Westmoreland, Fayette and Somerset counties.

“We feel that it would be beneficial — not only to the region but certainly to the airport — if we can augment our services back and forth to Orlando,” Monzo said.

Court case

The low-cost carrier’s continued service at the Unity airport, meanwhile, could be in jeopardy as a trial is scheduled to start next month in federal court in Boston. The court will hear a challenge filed by the U.S. Justice Department, which is suing to block JetBlue’s proposed $3.8 billion purchase of Spirit. The Justice Department claims the takeover would reduce competition and raise air fares by eliminating the nation’s biggest discount airline, according to the Associated Press.

Although Monzo said no one is “quite sure what will happen” with Spirit flights at Arnold Palmer in the future, the authority agreed to proceed with the grant application.

Monzo hopes to have a better idea of what the future of Spirit will look like toward the end of October.

“It’s a (publicly) traded organization, so they’re very tight-lipped about their plans,” Monzo said of Spirit. “We don’t know where we’re going to shake out.”

By the numbers

Meanwhile, passenger numbers on Spirit flights from the Unity airport are below the benchmark of previous years. There have been 98,868 total inbound and outbound Spirit passengers through the end of August, about 55.3% of the 178,664 passengers the airport had seen by the same time last year, according to the airport Traffic Record.

Despite Spirit’s cancellation of three other routes from the Unity airport to Florida since last year — Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa — airport grants director Dwayne Pickels said service out of Arnold Palmer is “not much different” than it was before the flight cuts.

The airport expects to reach the milestone of 3 million Spirit passengers by Nov. 1.

“It’s our duty as an airport to maintain what we have and keep that going,” Monzo said. “Whatever the airlines choose to do, we’ll adapt.”