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Thursday, February 10, 2000

Show Me state next for Pan Am

By Christine Gillette, Portsmouth Herald Staff Writer

DURHAM - Pan American Airways' next stop will be the St. Louis area, the airline's president and co-owner, David Fink told a recent CEO Forum at the University of New Hampshire.

Fink said during the program that service to the St. Louis area could begin in April.

Fink said yesterday that the airline is "looking at" offering passenger service between Pease International Tradeport and MidAmerica Airport in Belleville, Ill., approximately 25 minutes from downtown St. Louis. April would be the earliest that would happen, he said.

"It's been our intention all along to get there, we just don't have a tight schedule," he said.

If Pan Am enters the St. Louis market through MidAmerica, it would be the fourth time the airline has committed to an airport without other scheduled passenger service. The Pease-based airline was the first to commit to the tradeport, to Sanford, Fla., and to Gary, Ind. While Sanford does a brisk international charter business, it's the only one of the three that currently has other service.

Fink told the CEO Forum that such airports, known as "metro-convenient" because they are near major cities, have been key to Pan Am's success to date and are one of the main reasons he chose to base the airline at Pease, which is considered near Boston.

"We saw an opportunity at Pease," he said.

Like Pease, MidAmerica has a long runway (10,000 feet) and will soon be home to an Air National Guard unit that is relocating to Belleville from the Chicago area. A taxiway runs between MidAmerica and the runway at nearby Scott Air Force Base.

Pan Am is due to start service next month to Bangor, Maine, and Pittsburgh, the airline's first foray into a major airport.

By using smaller airports, Pan Am has been able to keep its costs down, and therefore keep its ticket prices down, which start at prices of $59 to about $125 one-way, depending on the destination.

For example, Fink said, it costs one major airline $42 per person to book a seat through its reservation system. Pan Am's cost is $4 to $5 because of the Web-based reservation system developed especially for it by VirtualAirways.com of Portsmouth. Fifteen percent of Pan Am's tickets are sold online through its Web site, www.flypanam.com, he said. "I never believed this would be the case, but it's growing very rapidly."

Fink told the CEO Forum that Pan Am's plans call for gradual expansion of its routes.

"We've got to be so careful with every step we take," he said. "We can't start believing the headlines."

The reason for the failure of many startup airlines, he said, is "people get ahead of themselves. It's intoxicating."