Pensacola has an opportunity to get Southwest Airlines for the Pensacola Gulf Coast Regional Airport. If we get it, Southwest officials have said that it could mean 9.000 more passengers a week flying into Pensacola.
In 2001, the Pensacola Chamber lured AirTran by getting 319 businesses to pay $2.1
million for two years’ worth of prepaid travel. By May, nearly 65,000 people (a record at the time) flew out of Pensacola, 26% more than in May 2001.
According to Chamber chair Mort O’Sullivan, Southwest isn’t looking for another travel bank to be created. What attracts the air carrier is the advertising effort to attract people to Pensacola.
Bay County and Walton County have passed a half-cent bed tax to use for such an effort and to help attract Southwest to their new regional airport which will be completed in 2010.