Will Lancaster Airport expand to commercial jetliners?

Airport has been in talks with several commercials carriers

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

Airdate: August 16th, 2023

 

Word late last year that Lancaster Airport was the third busiest airport in Pennsylvania was a surprise to some. More than 97,000 planes departed and arrived at the airport in 2021. Not many of them were commercial carriers though. That could change.

Low-cost airlines are showing interest in providing service to Lancaster Airport with aircraft that could hold up to 150 passengers.

Ed Foster, Director of Lancaster Airport told us on The Spark Wednesday that’s he’s met with Allegiant, JetBlue, Breeze Airways, Spirit and Avelo Airlines — all that expressed interest in Lancaster.

Foster indicated there is a market for commercial air service from Lancaster,”We do what we call air service market studies and we’ve done them for the last two years. I’ve been here three years this September, and we know that about 820,000 people a year travel from this area domestically in the United States and then about another 80,000 internationally. So about 900,000 people, total travel from this area out of there, only 10,000 travel from this airport. So a bulk of those, 99% of them are traveling to airports — 30 miles to 150 miles away.”

Destinations could include several in Florida like Orlando and Tampa and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Charleston and Nashville. Foster said fares would be comparable to larger airports and parking would continue to be free.

Some residents who live near Lancaster Airport say they’re concerned about noise and their lives being disrupted. Foster said their concerns will be taken into consideration,”I honestly think they would just see a bigger airplane once every two days. These airlines that we’ve been talking to, the proposals that they say they would like to do is two to four airplanes a week to these destinations. So you would see one airplane every two days and you would have to almost be sitting waiting for it to land to catch it, because it would be inside and landed in 15 seconds and then it would be taken off an hour later after it reloads.”

Foster added that he hopes airlines have signed a lease with the airport by late-winter or early spring of next year.