Southwest wish came true

Wichita saw a long-standing wish come true with Friday’s announcement that Southwest Airlines will serve Mid-Continent Airport as of 2013, transitioning from the current AirTran Airways service.

Thanks and congratulations are due Gov. Sam Brownback, Mayor Carl Brewer, Sen. Jerry Moran, Sedgwick County Commissioner Dave Unruh and the other officials and business leaders who went to Dallas to make Mid-Continent’s case to Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, ending many months of uncertainty about what the Southwest-AirTran merger would mean for Wichita.

After Boeing’s blow, Wichita and south-central Kansas really needed that outstanding news.

Now, the Legislature must do its part and renew the state’s $5 million support for affordable airfares for another year.

With Gov. Sam Brownback not only having endorsed the airfares subsidy in his 2013 budget proposal but also personally helped secure Southwest’s commitment to Wichita, legislative resistance is unwarranted and unwise.

The south-central Kansas economy needs the low fares and plentiful routes of Southwest. That’s why hundreds of companies – including Spirit AeroSystems, Cessna Aircraft, Hawker Beechcraft, Koch Industries and The Eagle – were willing to make verbal commitments to the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce that they would support Southwest, though its routes aren’t set. Landing Southwest also should calm taxpayer fears about the Wichita City Council’s decision last year to proceed with the $200 million project to build a new terminal.

But according to the eight leaders who met with Kelly in Dallas on Jan. 6, Southwest considers the subsidy program crucial to coming to Wichita. Under the 10-year-old affordable airfares initiative, Wichita and Sedgwick County contribute $1 million each annually, on top of the state’s subsidy since 2006, to ensure that Mid-Continent travelers continue to have the benefit of low-fare carriers AirTran to Atlanta and Frontier Airlines to Denver. In turn, their fares have leveraged reasonable prices on other carriers going east and west, enabling Mid-Continent ridership to rise 38 percent between 2000 and 2009.

It takes a long memory to fully appreciate what it will mean when planes with the Southwest flag start landing in Wichita.

Members of the Kansas congressional delegation, particularly former 4th District congressmen Todd Tiahrt and Dan Glickman and former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, fought hard to put an end to the Wright amendment with the goal of getting Southwest to Wichita. Since 1979, the ridiculous federal measure had restricted Dallas’ Love Field, Southwest’s hub, to service to the four states adjoining Texas.

But even after legislation signed by President Clinton in 1997 and a 2000 court ruling removed that impediment, Southwest showed no interest in Wichita.

The thinking was that the south-central Kansas market was just too small for the discount king. Never mind that a 2001 study found 44 percent of Mid-Continent’s potential fliers weren’t using the airport but instead driving to catch cheaper flights out of state, and that 33 percent of those lost fliers were doing so to fly Southwest.

But that’s all in the past, thanks to the proven benefits of the affordable airfares program. And thanks to Friday’s news, the future of Wichita air service now looks as bright as Southwest’s colorful fleet.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published January 15, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Southwest wish came true."