Digital Media Center
Bryant-Denny Stadium, Gate 61
920 Paul Bryant Drive
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0370
(800) 654-4262

© 2024 Alabama Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Frontier Airlines Exit Leaves Delaware Without Commercial Flights

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

If you want to fly in or out of Delaware, good luck, unless you have your own plane or the cash to charter one.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Delaware's is now the only state in the country that does not have access to commercial flights.

MARTIN: That means Delawareans have to make the schlep to Philly or Baltimore if they want to fly.

SCOTT GOSS: To Philadelphia can take about 45 minutes to an hour. To Baltimore, it can be an hour to an hour and a half.

SIEGEL: Scott Goss, a reporter for The News Journal of Wilmington says Frontier Airlines quietly withdrew from Newcastle Airport last week. It had been the only airline offering service in the state.

MARTIN: Frontier isn't the first to depart Delaware. Since the 1960s, United, Delta and U,S. Airways are about the companies that have come and gone.

SIEGEL: The problem is Delaware's proximity to those other cities. Scott Goss says Frontier began canceling flights last October. That's when it started adding flights out of Philadelphia International Airport.

GOSS: Those connecting flights it's able to get there may be more profitable for the company, but it wasn't that the service wasn't used or wasn't popular here in Delaware.

SIEGEL: In fact, Goss says, people were using the airport. Flights were more than 80 percent full.

MARTIN: But there's no regulation that says Frontier or any airline has to commit to an airport.

GOSS: Airlines are not required to sign any type of contract promising to provide service for any length of time. They can come and go as they please.

MARTIN: So this is what Delawareans get - turbulence. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

News from Alabama Public Radio is a public service in association with the University of Alabama. We depend on your help to keep our programming on the air and online. Please consider supporting the news you rely on with a donation today. Every contribution, no matter the size, propels our vital coverage. Thank you.