‘Fair Fares’ still essential

With the last of the Wright Amendment’s dumb restrictions finally history, south-central Kansas travelers will share in the benefit of new long-distance options on Southwest Airlines out of Dallas Love Field. But that will only be true as long as Southwest serves Wichita – a cause that will require more fliers, more public subsidies and continuing political will at City Hall, Sedgwick County and the Statehouse.

The easing of the Wright Amendment – 1970s federal legislation aimed at protecting Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport by restricting Love Field to service to the four states adjoining Texas – helped enable Southwest to start flying in and out of Wichita Mid-Continent Airport last year. But it was good to see the law expire entirely Monday.

The greater opportunities for Southwest could end up making it harder to justify serving Wichita long term, though, especially given that the airline posted a loss of $6.83 million from July 2013 to February 2014 on the two routes to Love Field and Chicago Midway. At least its service to Las Vegas made a little money ($57,600) during the same period.

Like AirTran Airways before it, Southwest has offset its losses via the Kansas Affordable Airfares Program, which makes available $4.75 million annually from the state combined with a total $1.75 million from the city of Wichita and Sedgwick County. As part of its current guarantee, which expires next June, Southwest must operate at least four daily round-trip flights a day from Wichita.

Though everybody would like the subsidies to be unneeded and expendable, that’s not going to be possible anytime soon. Voters need to make sure they are supporting candidates who would continue to fight for funding for the affordable airfares program as state legislators, Sedgwick County commissioners, and Wichita mayor and City Council members. That will only get harder at the state level, given the worsening budget picture.

Meanwhile, more fliers need to make a point of taking Southwest, and not just take advantage of the lower fares the carrier is leveraging across its routes – 55 percent lower to Dallas and 31 percent lower to Chicago, according to airport officials.

And if the current 68 percent load factor on those routes doesn’t improve and becomes too much of a burden for Southwest, even with the revenue guarantee, the carrier could give up on Wichita not long after the new terminal opens next spring and Mid-Continent is rechristened the Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. That would be very bad for Wichita and the south-central Kansas economy. The program informally known as “Fair Fares” has helped keep ICT service available and affordable through the past decade, especially when compared with peer airports in the region.

Luring Southwest to Wichita took decades. Let’s not lose it now.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published October 13, 2014 at 7:08 PM with the headline "‘Fair Fares’ still essential."