MidAmerica Airport's Passenger Carrier Pulling Out
Mascoutah, Illinois (November 2, 2001) -- Pan American Airways plans to halt service at MidAmerica Airport on December 3, depriving the struggling airport 25 miles east of St. Louis of its only passenger carrier.
Pan Am announced the closure Thursday in a news release hailing the Portsmouth, N.H.-based airline's upcoming service to Baltimore/Washington International Airport.
Pan Am said the pullout was necessary to provide that service, as well as new service to St. Petersburg, Fla., and to expand service to cities the airline already serves.
Area travel agents said a nationwide slump in air travel since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington hurt the airline.
"I truly am not surprised, but I am sad that this happened," said Lee McTeer, manager of the AAA Travel office in Belleville. She said the carrier had canceled several flights lately because of a lack of passengers.
Several St. Clair County officials said Pan Am had not warned them of the pullout.
St. Clair County Administrator Dan Maher said officials had been worried about the airline's health since May, when it dropped three of its six weekly nonstop flights from MidAmerica to Sanford, Fl.
"As we watched them pull back their service level, we wondered what they were up to," Maher said.
Pan Am now has three flights six days a week from Mascoutah.
The number of people boarding and exiting flights at MidAmerica dropped by almost 50 percent in September compared to the same month a year ago, an airport worker said last week.
"The immediate future for this airport is going to be cargo, airport-related businesses and charter flights," Maher said. "That's the niche we have to look at for the next five years."
The airport opened in 1998 as an alternative to Lambert Airport across the Mississippi River in St. Louis County. MidAmerica's passenger terminals sat idle for two years because airlines wouldn't schedule flights there.
One airline industry analyst said the chance of MidAmerica attracting another carrier soon are remote.
"I cannot envision a scenario that would bring a carrier in there," said Bill Oliver, a vice president of the Boyd Group.
"It's clearly a huge loss for MidAmerica," Steve Lott, business editor of the trade publication Aviation Daily, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "The hope when Pan Am went in was 'if you build it they will come.' With Pan Am starting service at that time, maybe other low-fare carriers and niche carriers would follow. Clearly, that didn't happen.
"Unfortunately, this could send a signal to the market that it's a struggle to make a market out of MidAmerica."
Information provided by KMOV-TV
KMOV-TV and Associated Press Article
© AP / KMOV-TV
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