Columbia Looks for Low-Fare Carrier

Smaller airports are constantly looking for low-fare carriers. In fact, many have applied for grants from the government to help promote service from them. In many smaller markets, one or two legacy carriers just have a couple of daily departures to their hubs. One one hand, this is great for the community because it creates more convenient air service and also opens up connections to nearly anywhere in the world with one or two connections. But here's the problem - the legacy carriers often charge pretty hefty fares, so airport managers are often doing the best they can to attract new entrants.

And a couple of airports in South Carolina have been working on that very problem, but without much success. Columbia airport has seen to LCCs, Spirit and Allegiant, come in and leave with no success. The airport even offered $15 million worth of incentives to Southwest, but the airline declined the idea after mulling it for a month. Meanwhile, Charleston saw AirTran, it's only LCC, leave fairly quickly as well.

So what's the solution? More money, of course! There's a bill currently in the South Carolina Senate that would establish a fund just for the purpose of developing more air service. To me, the idea sounds interesting - but I do have my concerns. Subsidies definitely have their place in the business, but I think there's a point where they just pay for service that is totally unable to stand on its own.