Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

I had some time today so I sent a letter to Governor Daniels. He has done a great job at recruiting and landing new jobs for Indiana. I figured with the new airport coming online in November there would be an opportunity for further economic development.

My suggestion to him was to approach AirTran Airways and recruit them to open their second hub here in Indianapolis. It is pretty well known in the aviation circles that AirTran has been looking for a 2nd hub. They tried to get the gate space in Midway and failed. They tried to get Midwest Airlines and failed. I think if approached properly we could land them.

IND will offer the best taxi times in the US. All the new facilities and the short taxi times will give IND the best turnaround times. By that I mean from wheels down to wheels up. Minimizing ground time saves on fuel and it allows the airline to execute more operations in a day which saves additional revenue. I suggested that perhaps the state could extend fuel tax credits when the airline exceeds a set number of gallons/pounds purchased in a year. Other tax credits could be extended to encourage the airline to open a training center, crew base, maintenance base, customer service center, etc.

The Indianapolis metro (MSA or CSA) is booming. Their is a great growing origination and destination base for the airline to feed off of. Our growth rate is the best in the region and the Indiana tourism industry is setting records. The Indiana convention business will get a huge boost with the expansion of the convention center downtown and the opening of the new convention hotel downtown in the very near future.

Your thoughts on this?

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

With the liklihood that NW, UA, and DL - at least two of the three - are going to merge with one another, it might be necessary to seek a small hub to fill up the airport terminal.

On the other hand, if you only have X amount of resources to spend on attracting new service to the airport, you should probably focus on international service; try to get a KLM flight to AMS or a BA flight to London.

Also, you'll probably do better to address that kind of letter to Nate Feltman at IEDC rather than to the Guv.

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

The form subject was economic development so that may be who ends up getting it. There was a drop down list and that was the subject I selected. It might have been business development or something of that nature.