WASHINGTON -- A travel agent is leading the effort to start a new
airline that would restore scheduled jet service to Lake Tahoe
Airport from major points in the Western U.S., beginning with
flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco on 115- to 120-seat
MD-80 aircraft.
Nevada-based Tahoe Air's principal founder, executive vice
president and chief operating officer is Mark Sando, owner of
Airline Ticket Central, a small retail agency in the Lake Tahoe
area that caters to local leisure travelers and does about $250,000
in annual sales.
"I'm a strong advocate of marketing policies that are very
friendly to the travel agent community," Sando said. Specific
policies have not been worked out yet, but he said the airline
would meet or exceed other carriers' commissions and try to reduce
CRS costs instead of cutting agents out of the process.
The carrier has applied for a Transportation Department
certificate that would allow it to operate and it plans to join the
Airlines Reporting Corp., provide full CRS access and offer
electronic ticketing. Tahoe Air's leadership includes chairman
George Warde, former president of American and Continental, and
president and chief executive officer Bruce Wetsel, former vice
president of Air Cal, which flew the first jets into Lake Tahoe
Airport in 1983.
Tahoe Air told the DOT its proposal would "restore much-needed
jet service to the Lake Tahoe market after an eight-year absence of
consistent operations." More specifically, the carrier wants to
target travelers heading to South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
Nearly 600,000 passengers used Lake Tahoe Airport in 1978, Tahoe
Air said, but American discontinued its jet service in 1991. Now
all the airport gets is charters that bring in a few thousand
passengers a year.