Southern Airways bailing on Purdue Airport, as SkyWest arrives
The reason why isn’t clear, but the first passenger service in 20 years will end Aug. 5 – the same date SkyWest and Purdue’s new terminal are expected to arrive
Southern Airways, the company Purdue recruited to return passenger service to the Purdue Airport for the first time in two decades, is leaving the market in early August, university officials confirmed this week.
Online bookings for the commuter airline between Purdue Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport have stopped at Aug. 5 for weeks. A booking agent replying to a Southern Airways site this week confirmed that flights would end at that point.
Attempts to reach Southern Airways officials were not immediately successful this week.
Southern Airways’ departure from Purdue Airport will overlap with the arrival of SkyWest Airlines, a subsidiary of United Airlines announced in April as a second airline at LAF. SkyWest’s first flights, now available for bookings, are timed to the anticipated Aug. 5 opening of an $11.8 million, 9,400-square-foot terminal named for Amelia Earhart, the famed aviator who worked for Purdue from 1935 to 1937. The new terminal, just west of the existing terminal, was part of a plan to accommodate larger, daily commercial flights.
Purdue officials didn’t offer explanations for Southern Airways pulling out, whether it was a matter of ticket sales or other factors for the subsidiary of Surf Air Mobility.
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