Air travel returning to Macon with flights to a major U.S. city

Middle Georgia Regional Airport could soon have flights taking off to the nation’s capital.

Macon-Bibb County was notified last week that a $4.7 million annual subsidy was awarded for flights to Washington, D.C. The Department of Transportation grant will allow Contour Airlines to operate the flights out of Macon for at least two years.

The Smyrna, Tennessee-based company will be the first airline to operate out of the regional airport since 2014. Washington, D.C., was selected because it’s the No. 2 destination for people in Middle Georgia for flights, according to the airport’s funding proposal.

A Macon-Bibb County committee is expected to vote on a resolution to accept the subsidy on Tuesday. If approved, the measure would go to the full County Commission on Jan. 17.

The airport manager will begin meeting with Contour officials this week to determine the timeline.

“With notification of the grant last week, everything takes off,” Macon-Bibb spokesman Chris Floore said.

The regional airport has an economic impact of about $200 million, primarily through aircraft maintenance. Having Contour in the mix with flights is a “tremendous step forward for the entire community,” airport manager Erick D'Leon said.

“For us airport service is really icing on the cake that rounds out our services,” he said.

Contour likely will begin offering flights sometime in the second quarter of the year, which begins in April, said Matt Chaifetz, the CEO of Corporate Flight Management Inc. The company formed Contour in 2015 for scheduled service flights.

“We really are just excited at the fact we can finally start the work with launching this service,” Chaifetz said.

Contour already offers flights between Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport, as well as from Tupelo, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. In Macon, the company would fill the void left by the departure of Silver Airways in November 2014, which operated just nine months at the airport.

Before Silver, another company, Georgia Skies, had a high number of cancellations and delays, and in 2012 the company had fewer than 500 passengers. The airport took another hit in 2008 when a Delta Air Lines subsidiary halted operations.

Contour and airport officials have said an aggressive marketing campaign will be instrumental in avoiding the same fate as recent carriers.

At the Middle Georgia Regional Airport, Contour plans to offer flights to Washington Dulles International Airport at an introductory price as low as $49 each way, and it would eventually have standard one-way fares of $89. The company would use 30-passenger planes.

There will be less hassle by flying out of the Macon airport instead of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for central Georgia residents, Floore said.

“It will be much quicker for everyone,” he said. “We’re certainly excited about this. Our airport manager will be meeting with (Contour) to talk logistics about when they want to start.”

One of the first steps will be hiring a locally based crew for flight and ground operations.

“That’s probably the pace-setting item,” Chaifetz said.

Contour also is a certified air carrier by the Department of Defense, which officials say is a boost because of the proximity of Robins Air Force Base. Overall, there is a market of about 600,000 passengers within a half-hour of Middle Georgia Regional Airport, according to the report submitted for the subsidy.

“Any way that our airport can be utilized in a positive, significant way is going to be important for the airport moving forward,” Macon-Bibb County Commissioner Larry Schlesinger said.

This story was originally published January 9, 2017 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Air travel returning to Macon with flights to a major U.S. city."