Was also done in England a few months ago, although in that case it was the airline hiring temps to fly passengers out of an airport so they could maintain their subsidy.
To me, it is ridicules. They are this little airport, that is giving away flights for their million dollars. The giving away doesn’t bother me, its giving 1 million dollars to a small airport to most likely attract a carrier that will stay for a year and then leave. Lets face it, the future of aviation isn’t with these small dinky airports. We need to stop wasting money on it, and concentrate on improving our ourdated major airports that need it.
When you have a government giving 700b to companies that screwed up… they probably won’t even remember they gave that million 5 mins after the cheque (or “check”, my British English being displayed here) is handed over. They probably ‘misplace’ that amount of money all the time.
They give too much money to small airports…and other dumb projects…
Which is why we are so badly in debt. We have to cut down on ridicules government spending. Inflation can already contribute to increasing taxes. All this spending will increase our taxes even more.
The whole thing needs to be cleaned up… I don’t think anyone ever looked through the whole budget… so pork barrel spending, spending for personal gain, all of it just passes through unnoticed.
Not for nothing, but some of those small airports depend on that funding just to stay afloat. For example, KLBF and KEAR just reached their numbers for getting the funding (KEAR needed 10,000 boardings). Both are served by Great Lakes Airlines which feeds into KDEN. Lynx Aviation (feeder for FFT) I believe also flies into there. Otherwise it’s at least 3 - 4 hours to the closest major field in any direction (2.5 to LNK, 3.5 to OMA, 3 to DEN). Granted, most of these are smaller college towns, but they definitely do benefit from the funds they get. Now… using free flights to get the funds… Purpose for the customer is great, but you could question the motives behind it…