The Grand Forks Regional Airport Authority's board of commissioners has approved the possibility of awarding an incentive package to a lobbyist successful in attracting westbound flights to Grand Forks International Airport.
Steve Johnson, executive director of the Grand Forks Regional Airport Authority, said the board of commissioners has approved spending up to $100,000 as a finder's fee of sorts to a consultant for landing a carrier adding westbound flights.
The final approval or amount approved would be at the discretion of airport staff and the task force attempting to bring additional air service to the airport.
Johnson said the he has not heard back from United Airlines or Frontier Airlines about proposals seeking to add service from Grand Forks to Denver, which included financial incentives to the air carriers. Johnson said he does not expect to hear back from either carrier unless they are calling to say that new flights are coming.
Boardings
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The airport currently has five round-trip Northwest Airlines flights at day to and from Minneapolis after Northwest brought back a flight a day last month that it had earlier taken away. Some of the Northwest flights are operated by Northwest and some are operated by Mesaba Airlines and Pinnacle Airlines.
The airport had 6,881 airline boardings in October, up 3 percent from 6,681 in October 2006, but down from 7,345 in October 2003.
This year the Grand Forks airport had a total of 65,230 airline boardings through October, down from 69,083 a year earlier and 72,748 in 2005.
"Overall the trend is positive, at least late in the year," Johnson said. "We would prefer to be higher year-to-date, but when the number of seats and number of flights is down, that is probably unrealistic."
Johnson said the decrease in the number of flights and seats offered is based on business decisions by Northwest Airlines.
"It seems like we have settled into a new norm of five flights a day," Johnson said. "The airport authority is always trying to convince them to offer more flights and more seats."
