{"id":5680,"date":"2012-03-15T14:12:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T20:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=5680"},"modified":"2012-08-07T10:03:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T16:03:01","slug":"analyst-fewer-flights-from-boise-cant-be-good-for-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/03\/15\/analyst-fewer-flights-from-boise-cant-be-good-for-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyst: Fewer Flights From Boise Can’t Be Good For Business"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Boise Airport \/ City of Boise<\/p>

A passenger surveys arrivals and departures.<\/p><\/div>\n

Frontier Airlines recently announced it won’t resume service between Boise and Denver this spring.\u00a0 Early this year, Southwest discontinued its flights from Boise to Seattle, Salt Lake and Reno.\u00a0 An American Airlines affiliate has cancelled its service from Boise to Los Angeles.\u00a0 The net effect is that there will be 20 percent fewer seats leaving Boise this summer than last. What does that mean, as the city and state hustle to attract new businesses?\u00a0 That’s the question I’ve been asking of a lot of people this week.<\/del> Among them is Adie Tomer, a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution, who focuses on transportation and infrastructure issues.<\/em><\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>You have reviewed the recent numbers related to air service in and out of Boise.\u00a0 What do you see?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Overall, what I\u2019m seeing in Boise is that passenger numbers are quite a bit down from the economic peak.\u00a0 The passenger numbers are down, and it looks like the effect of that is lost corridors and less service.<\/p>\n

Direct service was lost to Atlanta.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t a lot of people taking that flight, but of course if you lose a flight to Atlanta, and you still need to do business there, you have no choice but to fly and you\u2019re forced to use connecting flights.<\/p>\n

One other thing: the load factors in and out of Boise have been rising since the recession hit, and also since 2000.\u00a0 What that means is the airlines flying in and out of Boise have adjusted their flights to better account for packing the seats.\u00a0 It means the airlines are probably operating more efficiently for their bottom line.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>That\u2019s true across the country, right?\u00a0 Flights are fuller, and the TSA has said we\u2019ll continue to see that trend over the next several years.<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>That\u2019s correct.\u00a0 Flight numbers are down across the country, but the load numbers are higher.\u00a0 The passenger thinks, \u201cI\u2019d much rather have as many flights as possible.\u201d\u00a0 But the flip-side is that if the airlines are not operating efficiently, then they\u2019re more likely to go into bankruptcy court, where the public is going to have to help them.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What I\u2019m interested in is how this loss of flights both reflects and contributes to Boise\u2019s economic situation.<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>It\u2019s a great question.\u00a0 We know through academic research (and, frankly, intuitively) how businesses approach their opportunities for growth.\u00a0 A direct connection and the ability to have face-to-face contact can create strong ties, economically, between places.<\/p>\n

Having direct service to Denver and Salt Lake, which have some of the highest connectivity counts across the country, there is an ability to reach a vast number of places, not just domestically but internationally.\u00a0 But there is something to be said for having a direct connection.<\/p>\n

The loss of those connections certainly hurts businesses.\u00a0 If nothing else, it takes more time to reach places.\u00a0 One thing we notice, with regards to the recession: economic growth in Boise was hit quite hard.\u00a0 The drop was one of the biggest in the country, in terms of economic growth.\u00a0 It would be expected, as a result of that, to see flights dropping and corridor connections changing.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>That makes sense.\u00a0 Flights drop off when the demand for them drops off.\u00a0 I\u2019m also wondering, though, whether it becomes a disincentive for businesses that might consider coming in or expanding operations.\u00a0 How does that affect a metro area?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>The overall character of the airport is always a significant part of the portfolio for attracting businesses to a location, as well as retaining them.\u00a0 There\u2019s no question that having fewer flights is not a positive for Boise.\u00a0 Now, how much it could adversely affect the metropolitan areas versus others, there\u2019s a lot of other factors that go into play — education characteristics, how many people are moving in, what\u2019s going on with housing prices.\u00a0 A lot of elements are swirling together, but there\u2019s no question that a loss of flights is not going to help the sales pitch when it comes to attracting new businesses.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>I\u2019m not wrong, then, in thinking of it as a snowball?\u00a0 In other words, while the loss of flights results from economic dislocation, it also contributes to it?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>That\u2019s absolutely right.\u00a0 And it goes both ways, too.\u00a0 Recently, we\u2019ve seen positive economic growth in Boise.\u00a0 That can snowball in a positive way, as businesses begin to expand and economic growth returns to the region.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and shortened.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frontier Airlines recently announced it won’t resume service between Boise and Denver this spring.\u00a0 Early this year, Southwest discontinued its flights from Boise to Seattle, Salt Lake and Reno.\u00a0 An American Airlines affiliate has cancelled its service from Boise to Los Angeles.\u00a0 The net effect is that there will be 20 percent fewer seats leaving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":5693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[68,176,46],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9708,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680\/revisions\/9708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}