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Tuesday, March 28, 2000

Pan Am picks up Florida service

By Christine Gillette, Portsmouth Herald Staff Writer

PORTSMOUTH - To meet the demands of travelers and travel agents, Pan American Airways yesterday launched service between Pittsburgh and Sanford, Fla.

The Pease International Tradeport-based airline began service last week between Portsmouth, Pittsburgh and Gary, Ind., but yesterday moved up plans to start flights between Pittsburgh and the Orlando area by more than a month.

"This is a nonstop (flight) from Pittsburgh to Sanford," said Dan Fortnam, Pan Am's director of marketing.

The flight is actually the second leg of a route that will begin in Bangor, Maine, make a stop in Pittsburgh and continue on to Sanford. The Bangor leg begins May 1, which was the original date the Pittsburgh-to-Sanford service was supposed to start.' flight attendants would strike and ground that airline, Pan Am decided to move it up.]

"We had had it mapped out for a May 1 start date," Fortnam said. "However, over the past week with the trouble brewing over at US Air, we had tremendous interest from travelers, travel agents and particularly the (Pittsburgh) airport," Fortnam said. "So we moved it up. We've got to be responsive."

Pittsburgh is a hub for US Airways.

Although US Airways workers didn't strike, Pan Am is already picking up bookings from Pittsburgh to Sanford. "Needless to say, we didn't get as many as we would have liked," Fortnam said.

He said the Bangor leg is being held off until May 1 to allow time for bookings in that area.

Moving up the Pittsburgh to Sanford service start will probably mean fully booked flights by July instead of August as Pan Am had originally projected, Fortnam said.

The start of the Bangor-Pittsburgh-Sanford route on May 1 will make some changes in the scheduling of most of Pan Am's flights, he said.

The daily flight from Portsmouth to Pittsburgh and Gary will depart at 7:30 a.m. instead of the current 6:15 a.m. The return flight will land at Pease at about 9 p.m.

The flight to Sanford from Pease will still leave at 11 a.m., but return at 5:30 p.m. instead of 4 p.m.

The arrival of the two flights a day from Bangor at Pease will shift to 6:50 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. Departures from Pease to Bangor will be at 6:55 a.m. and 9:30 p.m.

In addition to the new service between Pittsburgh and Sanford, Pan Am has also been busy with charter flights, Fortnam said. On Saturday, the airline had departures from Pease of its regular scheduled flights as well as charters to Montego Bay, Jamaica, St. Martin and St. Kitts. In addition, Pan Am Services helped fuel and load other companies' charter flights.

"We had hundreds of people, but it all went very, very well," Fortnam said.