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Airport to step up wooing of all fliers

Airport to step up wooing of all fliers

With Pittsburgh International Airport traffic projected at its lowest level in 21 years, the Allegheny County Airport Authority has taken to the airwaves to drum up more travelers.

The authority has launched a $272,000 advertising campaign designed to generate more local traffic and to ease the impact of cutbacks by dominant airline US Airways, the bankrupt carrier that plans to eliminate its Pittsburgh hub.

The campaign, featuring television, radio, newspaper, billboard and Internet ads, gets right to the point, saying, "Discount fares have landed at Pittsburgh International Airport."

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It emphasizes that newer carriers that have recently entered or expanded here offer more opportunities for lower fares, said authority spokeswoman JoAnn Jenny.

"I think it's important that the public has an awareness that we are going to maintain a world-class facility here. We do have a lot of different airlines flying out of here. We're not a one-airline airport," she said.

The authority plans to concentrate its marketing efforts in Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio, where it hopes to persuade residents to make the drive here to catch a flight rather than to drive to Cleveland.

That would be a victory in itself, given that many Pittsburghers, including Mayor Tom Murphy, have driven to Cleveland in the past to catch a cheap flight.

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"In many respects, we're saying you don't have to fly out of Cleveland any more. Our fares have gone down," Jenny said.

There's no doubt that the airport could use more traffic.

Even before the US Airways bankruptcy and the uncertainty about its future, the airport was projecting about 12.6 million passengers for the year. That would be the lowest total since 1983, when 11.9 million travelers used the airport.

Through July, overall traffic was down 2.5 percent compared with the same period last year, and US Airways is expected to cut the number of daily flights, now at 327, down to 243 in November. Further sizable cutbacks are possible in February.

The ad campaign is designed to help Pittsburgh International make the transition from a hub dominated by US Airways to an airport whose fortunes will rise or fall on the amount of local traffic it can generate.

New and existing carriers will decide what service, if any, to provide in Pittsburgh based on the level of the so-called origination and destination passengers using the airport. That's particularly true of point-to-point carriers such as Southwest Airlines, which requires a predictable level of steady to growing business before it will enter a market.

The campaign is expected to run through October, although Jenny said a second phase was planned in the spring. The ads direct viewers and listeners to the authority's www.FlyPittsburgh.com Web site and its new "fare saver" feature.

First Published: September 16, 2004, 4:00 a.m.

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