Southwest mulls expansion at MacArthur

Long Islanders, it's up to you.

That was the message Friday from Southwest Airlines Co., as executives discussed possible expansion of operations at Islip's MacArthur Airport, hinging on their soon-to-close acquisition of low-cost rival AirTran.

Though Southwest is now MacArthur's dominant carrier and has flown from the airport since 1999, Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly said a lack of demand has led the airline to scale back from 34 flights a day in 2007 to 24 now.

"The traffic response has been a little disappointing . . . Somehow we've got to get people to stop driving past MacArthur to JFK and LaGuardia," he told Newsday after a speech in Dallas. "We tried building it to see if [passengers] would come. . . . We put flights in and they just weren't successful."

The airport launched a multiyear, multimedia marketing campaign in 2009 that now includes social media. The campaign emphasizes the convenience and no-fuss experience of flying into and out of MacArthur.

Southwest and officials at the town-owned-and-operated airport agree prospects for growth at MacArthur are enormous. An airport-commissioned demand study out last month showed MacArthur captures just 26 percent of passengers in its defined catchment area of Suffolk County and eastern parts of Nassau. The report also found that Atlanta was among the three most sought-after destinations Long Islanders can't yet fly directly to from MacArthur.

The AirTran deal -- expected to close within a month -- would give Southwest another 140 planes, access to the nation's busiest airport in Atlanta and its first international destinations, the Caribbean and Mexico.

Kelly last week met with Commissioner Teresa Rizzuto at the Ronkonkoma airport to discuss the carrier's future growth at MacArthur. He asked her to work with Southwest's network planning division, responsible for the airline's overall routing.

No promises were made, Rizzuto said Friday but "we touched on the demand survey, discussed congestion in the New York City area and the potential of growth here. He said he was very impressed with the airport and the relationship we have."In a separate interview, Bob Jordan, Southwest's vice president of strategy and planning, said the AirTran deal, awaiting federal approval, would "let us consider new markets out of Islip." He declined to elaborate on specific destinations, but said of flights to Atlanta: "That's something we would absolutely consider."