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Cape Air Schedule and Information

Cape Air - after 9 months of Operations

Cape Air began flying scheduled commercial flights between Knox County Regional Airport and Boston last November. Colgan Air had previously provided this service but, last year decided to replace their Beech 1900 (19 passengar aircraft) with the larger Saab 340 (34 passengar aircraft). Rather than meet the costly infrastructure requirements of the larger Saab, Knox County opted to accept Cape Air's proposal to use the Cessna 402 (9 passenger aircraft). Cape Air offered a significantly lower fare for the flight to Boston. Last October, a one-way ticket to/from Boston with Colgan Air had reached a high of $293.00. Since November, Cape Air has been offering round-trip tickets for $99.00 and books of ten oney-way tickets for $650.00. Without any specials, a one-way ticket Boston was still only $126.50. Now, nine months later, does the decision to accept a smaller aircraft with a smaller cost still make sense?

During the month of June, Cape Air's enplanements (the number of passengers that get on an aircraft here) were up over last June's figures by nearly 25%. The enplanements for the second quarter of 2009 (April, May and June) were up over 10% and the enplanements for the first half of the year (January to June) were up over 5%. Only March and April showed a decrease from the previous year. These postive indicators contrast sharply with the state-wide and national aviation trends. Cape Air's ability to attract more passengers, even during these trying economic times, is directly attributable to their service and low-cost fares.

Nearly all the cutomer comments have been positive, with frequent kudos for the low fares and many comments about how suprisingly comfortable the seats and the flights are. But, the airport manager has been in contact with Cape Air recently regarding two types of customer complaints. Booking a flight on Cape Air hs been a challenge from the beginning and still causes customer frustrations, especially when trying to use an on-line, third party site (like Travelocity). Some of the more popular sites do not show RKD (the call letters for Knox County Regional Arport). The one exception seems to have been cheapoair.com But, even this site shows the flights, but frequently indicates "no seats available". This leads to the second complaint, that Cape Air has not yet added additional aircraft to the schedule, as they had indicated would be their practice when the passenger demand was high. This accounts for one of the reasons the electronic booking systems do not show available seats.

During the lasat two weeks of July, Cape Air has added an additional aircraft to two of the five flights they run each day. This boosts the aircraft supporting this to seven per day. Cape Air will also add extra aircraft when possible/required during key times in August.

In addtion, part of the on-line booking problems are cause because we are not "Code Shared" with any of the large airlines. During discussions last year, Cape Air had indicated they were working with Jet Blue to try to make that happen. They have been successful, but the computer softeware update to make it a reality will not actually take place until January 2010.

So, for the time being, the best way and frequently the cheapest way, to book a flight is to use capeari.com or call 1-800-352-0714 to the legs between here and Boston and use whatever other method you normally would use for any additional legs. But, many have had good luck booking theri entirte flight through cheapoair.com.

Cape Air
These flights are now loaded in the system and are bookable by the public. Reservations can be made on line at www.flycapeair.com,Cheapoair.com or by calling 1-800-352-0714.

Schedule

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