QUINCY (WGEM) – The city of Quincy is back to deciding on an essential air service to provide flights at Quincy Regional Airport. It’s trying to address a decrease in passengers by creating a more reliable service.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Air Wisconsin, Cape Air, and Contour all gave their pitches on how they can help return the airport to its prime travel destination.

“A little bit of math, but roughly we boarded 4,800 and some change this calendar year,” said Quincy Regional Airport Director Bill Lantz.

Those numbers are not what the Quincy Regional Airport wants to hear at the end of the year. At one time, the airport was thriving, and the city has plans to get back to that point.

“We’ve got to be at least 10,000 at what they call enplanements per year, so we need 10,000 paid passengers on a commercial air service and that’s what we need to get back to,” said Quincy Mayor Mike Troup.

Some may ask, “Why are the numbers so low at the airport?” The answer to that is very simple.

“Reliability is the next big step that whatever the schedule is on time, performance, did you fly and say you were gonna get to Chicago or whatever the destination is,” said Troup.

Reliability was the main topic of the meeting after safety and spirits were certainly sky-high coming out of Wednesday’s pitches.

“All three companies provided solid reliability data, and so then it comes down to basically who do you trust and what’s best for Quincy,” said Lantz.

Many new ideas were brought at Wednesday’s meeting including two of the airlines being 50-plus passenger jets, which could eliminate a popular destination.

“For the longest time, we’ve been flying to Chicago O’Hare and St. Louis Lambert. Lambert has had less air traffic. There is less airlines flying out of St. Louis, so the choices for the traveling public is not as good as it was 10, 20 years ago,” said Troup.

No decision was made on Wednesday, but Troup also stated that he expects the airline to be selected by the end of January.

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