March 2009
North Carolina takes pride in its aviation heritage, and strives to continue its leadership role by finding new means for aviation to benefit its residents and communities. Last year a coalition of eleven communities in North Carolina applied for and was awarded a grant from the USDOT under the Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASDP). The proposal advanced to the USDOT an idea to create and execute an education and awareness program designed to highlight the availability of on-demand air service at these 11 communities across the state. By promoting the utility of the air service and the local airports, the efficiency, availability and economic development leverage of air service could benefit North Carolina communities at all its 70+ public-use airports across the state, not only the nine airports serviced by scheduled commercial service.
The program that the Small Community Grant Award enabled has been designated “NCFlyPorts”, to underscore the message that you can fly from your local airport. The NCFlyPorts program is a marketing effort designed to spread the word about on-demand air-taxi availability from local airports, and to answer the obvious questions: what it is, how to use it, and whether it is really affordable. By coordinating with local airport officials and community leaders, creating and providing presentations at community meetings with governmental and civic organizations, and meeting and communicating with economic development groups and local business executives, the overall message of awareness the NCFlyPorts program is designed to provide is strengthened by tailoring it to address scenarios specific to communities and demographics, and help them better understand the numerous benefits that their local airports bring.
A critical piece of this marketing strategy to convey these messages to the public is leverage the information gathered from local leaders through a network of community oriented websites, advertising the local airport and the services it supports. Each site is completely customized by highlighting local businesses and services, providing links to simplify travel, and including information about the local area such as weather and maps. An online booking engine for on-demand service is a major part of each website, and provides users with access to real-time quotes for air service – customized air service that takes them from their own local airport and delivers them almost directly to their destination: real point-to-point air travel. These flights can originate from most public airports in North Carolina and go to destinations within the state as well as regional destinations up and down the eastern seaboard. All this, with times customers choose, and personalized service, provided with a maximum level of efficiency and convenience.
Marketing collateral has been crafted for each community to help promote the air service locally, and coincide with the websites. Printed media has been produced, which include rack cards, and marketing cards, and electronic and broadcast media messages are being evaluated for efficiency and message penetration.
As we begin our second year of this program, we will strive to improve, customize and polish the websites with more information, and respond to feedback from you. Our plans including working more closely with local airport and FBO staff, and ensure they have the answers when fielding questions about air service availability. We will create metrics to help evaluate the benefits this new air service program is providing to its member communities and the service providers currently covering North Carolina, and nurture our collaborative marketing efforts with our community and air service provider partners. The NCFlyPorts team looks forward to this year, to help small communities and local airports in North Carolina enjoy better access to air service, and the many opportunities it supports.
Click here to visit NCFlyPorts.com and learn more about flying on-demand air taxi service throughout North Carolina and beyond!