Airport Service to End April 1 : Republic Will Quit Burbank, Ontario
Republic Airlines, which has served Burbank and Ontario airports for more than a quarter of a century, said Monday that it will end its service to those cities April 1.
Republic operates nine flights into and out of Burbank daily, four of them to and from Phoenix and the other five to and from Las Vegas. It has eight flights into and out of Ontario and four each to and from Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Airline officials said the company’s 60 employees in the two cities were told of the decision late Friday. Republic employs 39 people in Burbank and 21 in Ontario.
Officials said that no jobs will be lost and that the employees will be offered positions elsewhere in the Republic system.
Reports that the Minneapolis-based carrier also will eliminate service to and from John Wayne Airport in Orange County, as well as Fresno and Sacramento, were dismissed as rumors by Redmond Tyler, director of corporate communications. Tyler said the reason for Republic’s action had nothing to do with traffic on the routes, which he described as “healthy.”
Republic’s reason, he said, was “that we were interested in feeding traffic into our three major hubs--Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Memphis. These flights did not do that. They did not contribute to our long-haul objective of improving and strengthening the hubs.”
150,272 Passengers in ’84
The other three locations--Orange County, Fresno and Sacramento--offer longer-haul flight opportunities than do the cities being cut from the schedule, he added.
In 1984, Republic flew 150,272 passengers in and out of Burbank. In January of this year, the traffic totaled 10,686. Passengers to and from Ontario totaled 115,406 last year and 8,692 in the first month of this year.
Republic’s competitors on the routes said immediately that they will increase or consider increasing service. America West, which now has four flights between Burbank and Phoenix, will add one flight daily.
But its chairman, Edward Beauvais, said in an interview that the carrier will use one of its new Boeing 737-300s, which has 143 seats, on the new route. The larger plane and extra flight amount to a 47% increase in capacity, he said.
He said he hopes to increase service from Ontario to Phoenix to eight flights daily from the current six. One additional flight already had been planned to start April 1.
Pacific Southwest Airlines, which also flies between Burbank and Phoenix and Las Vegas, said it also plans to increase service to make up for the Republic flights.
Drad Keller, a spokesman for Sunworld Airways, which flies two round trips a day between Ontario and Las Vegas and three on Friday and Sunday, said there is a “strong possibility” that its service will be increased.
