Southeast labors to land customers

By STEVE HUETTEL

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 25, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- Southeast Airlines has experienced a rough ride in its fledgling efforts to sell flights to the public.

The Largo airline stopped flying to Atlanta from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport on Jan. 15. A week earlier, Southeast discontinued flights to Atlanta from Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.

That leaves Southeast, the Tampa Bay area's only locally owned airline, with just three flights a week from St. Petersburg-Clearwater to Charlotte, N.C., that it sells directly to customers. Southeast also flies as a charter carrier for tour operators.

"Everybody says they want low-cost service," Tom Kolfenbach, president of privately held Southeast, said Wednesday. "But if you go in and they don't get on the planes, you wonder if they really wanted it. I'm not going to fly empty airplanes."

Southeast launched the "public charter" business in October with one-way fares as low as $69 to Atlanta and $89 to Charlotte. The company promoted the service with a $1-million television and print advertising budget.

But the airline's 110-seat DC-9 jets typically flew about 40 percent full from Sarasota and slightly more than half full from St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Kolfenbach said. Southeast's break-even point is 63 percent, he said.

The airline couldn't overcome two competitors with large hubs in Atlanta. Delta Air Lines has 14 daily flights from Tampa International Airport, and AirTran Airways has seven. Southeast flew no more than one round-trip a day.

That eliminated business travelers, who crave frequent flights to match tight and changing schedules, and passengers going anywhere but Atlanta, said Fred Piccolo, executive director of the Sarasota-Manatee Aviation Authority.

Southeast knew that going in and targeted leisure travelers, Kolfenbach said.

What he didn't expect was having so much trouble winning customers from AirTran, which formerly operated as ValuJet.

"People just automatically figure AirTran is the low-cost carrier," Kolfenbach said. "They had $61 fares, but there weren't that many . . . while we had half of our seats at $69," he said.

Passengers holding Atlanta tickets were offered earlier flights or given refunds, he said.

Southeast will decide in the next 45 days whether to fly to other markets domestically or in the Caribbean, Kolfenbach said. The company bought two more jets, increasing its fleet to six, to bolster its growing charter business for tour operators, he said.

-- Contact Steve Huettel at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

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