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I'll give you my take on it, Sam, MESA has good prospects in the Texas market. They've started jet service out of Fort Worth's Meacham Field, which is a closer-in airport to Fort Worth than is DFW International, thus somewhat emulating SouthWest Airlines' strategy of using Dallas' close-in Love Field. Now, having said that, you can't make a direct apples-to-apples comparison between the two or extrapolate any kind of results. MESA is flying the new "regional" jets out of Meacham, I believe they're using the Bombardier model. Many others have tried intra-Texas service from Meacham in the past, but always with turbo-prop aircraft. Fort Worth has finally in the past few years started to see the payoff of the seeds that were planted in the late 80's and early years of this decade as the smart money in Fort Worth < the Bass'es, the Moncrief's, et all > played their cards and made things happen behind the scenes while plastic-brains-and-plastic-money Dallas sat and read its press clippings. In another 10 years, the area will be referred to as "Fort Worth/Dallas", but I digress. Now, service out of Meacham Field in Fort Worth is not going to make or break MESA, but it is indicative of the entrepreneurial thinking that's going on in the company, and the ability to perceive a market and go after it. Hope this helps. |
