LITTLE ROCK — US Airways Group Inc. announced Tuesday that starting in late March it will offer nonstop daily flights between Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field, and Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
The announcement comes more than two years after the airline initially said it planned to expand such flights to a number of cities.
“This has been a long time coming,” Ron Mathieu, executive director of Little Rock National, said in an interview. “We are the state’s capital and we don’t have a [nonstop] flight to the nation’s capital.”
He noted that Southwest Airlines has a nonstop flight to Baltimore/Washington International Airport, but said that the “airport of choice for people is Reagan,” which is about 15 minutes from downtown Washington.
The 69-passenger Embraer 170 aircraft will leave Little Rock at 6:15 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. Flights from Washington, D.C., will leave at 1:55 p.m. and 8:05 p.m.
The flights are offered through US Airways subsidiary Republic Airlines.
In August 2009, Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways said it wanted to start the flights between Washington, D.C., and Little Rock after approval of a proposed time slot swap with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. However, government regulators did not approve the deal until last month.
Under the approved deal, US Airways, the No. 5 airline by traffic, gained 42 slots at Reagan that once belonged to Delta, the No. 2 airline in the United States. Delta acquired 132 slots at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and also paid US Airways $66.5 million in cash and gave rights to a route to Brazil in 2015, according to news releases.
Initially the deal was put on hold by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Transportation Department, which worried the deal would stymie competition. Originally, government regulators wanted the two carriers to auction off 14 slot pairs, takeoffs and landings at Reagan and 20 at LaGuardia. Both companies refused, but eventually agreed to sell eight slot pairs at Reagan and 16 at LaGuardia.
US Airways on Tuesday also announced new service to Reagan from Birmingham, Ala.; Fayetteville, N.C.; Islip, N.Y.; Jacksonville, N.C.; Pensacola, Fla.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Fort Walton Beach, Fla. Those cities currently have no existing service to and from Reagan, a news release said.
Memphis is also gaining new service to Reagan, the release said.
Davien Anderson, a spokesman for US Airways, said in an interview that Little Rock and other cities were picked because demand for direct flights to Reagan was high.
The news that Little Rock will get a flight to downtown Washington, D.C., was well received by several travelers, including U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark.
“I get a lot more work done on a nonstop flight than if I have to change planes,” Griffin said in a phone interview. “It’s a more-efficient use of my time. And if I take the Southwest flight direct to Baltimore I still have an hour or so before I get to D.C.”
Griffin said there have been a number of occasions when he missed meetings because of stopover delays.
Kay Arnold, who is a member of the Little Rock Airport Commission, said the addition gives travelers coming to and from Little Rock more options.
“All customers like to have options; it increases competition and competition is good,” she said. “When we have competition we usually have better prices, which leads to more usage.”
After US Airways starts the flights March 25, passengers will have to choose between the convenience of flying into Reagan at a cost of $790 before taxes, or taking Southwest, which has round trip tickets to Baltimore/ Washington International, starting at $316 before taxes. That’s assuming customers were booking flights Tuesday for March 26.
For Robert Coon, who is a partner at Impact Management Group Inc., a Little Rock-based public relations firm, the question is a no brainer.
“Flying into Reagan is so much easier,” he said.
Business, Pages 23 on 01/04/2012