When Vision Airlines announced it would start serving small cities and towns with service (primarily) to the Destin, Florida are a while back, I declared it a failed idea from the start.  One of you even took issue with my assessment but I could not identify how an airline makes money serving Savannah, GA to Destin, FL with a 737 even if it was weekly service. 

The markets they identified and started serving are too close, in most cases, to Destin, FL to make sense for a family to visit via airliner.  A family of 4 will drive from Huntsville, Alabama to Destin, not fly.  And apparently I was right because Huntsville is also on the kill list. 

So are Baton Route, LA; Columbia, SC; and Greenville-Spartanburg, SC.  This airline made bad decisions.  It has flights from Tampa and Fort Myers to Destin and did not originally did not make it possible for people to automatically connect in Destin to flights elsewhere. 

I predict we’ll see other cities cancelled such as Lafayette, Asheville, Shreveport, Little Rock, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Louisville.  Ironically, this is an airline that *could* survive if it would serve major markets with non-daily flights to Destin.  I don’t think the Atlanta to Destin route is a bad idea.  Nor is the Houston to Destin or St. Louis to Destin routes either.  Why they haven’t added cities such as DFW, Austin, Nashville, Cincinatti, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Minneapolis, or Kansas City?

Ultimately, I still predict that this airline will fail and I believe it will do so much sooner than later.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax