New Airport in Florida Opens

I've written here about Northwest Florida Beaches International Airpot (ECP) here before. It's an exciting project. The first publicly-funded airport to open since 9/11, in fact.

Well service has now started at the airport - and the big focus is that it's a new city for Southwest Airlines. It's interesting because this is a change in strategy for Southwest. The project is risky, but thanks to some financial assitance from the St. Joe real estate company, Southwest cannnot lose money here for the first two years of operation. It's an exciting prospect for other small communities, since Southwest hasn't been huge on incentives before, and this shows they're interested. Southwest is required to provide eight flights a day, and the airline is doing two flights each to Baltimore, Nashville, Houston, and Orlando.

But while all the focus is on Southwest - let's not forget Delta, who was the only carrier serving the old airport. Plus, Delta has upgraded some of its RJ flying to Memphis and Atlanta to mainline service, which provides a nice little boost.

Anyway, this is a project I have been very interested in following - it will be interesting to see how they do.