Vision Airlines Expanding to Destin/Fort Walton Beach and the Southeast

Earlier this month I started trying to figure out how I was going to get to the spring national bridge tournament in Louisville in March and was not pleased when I saw that Delta was charging $319 for this round trip and Bing.com said there's a 76% chance that price will stay with $15 and a 17% chance the price will drop more than $15. Now, I'm as loyal to Delta as anyone, probably only because it flies almost everywhere, I have lots of Delta SkyMiles, and fly mostly out of their main hub Atlanta, but for a 500 mile domestic trip $319 is a lot of money. Frequently one can get cross-country flights for less than that.

I found no other airline that was flying this route until yesterday when I happened to see that Vision Airlines has 1 or 2 round trips per day between Atlanta (ATL) and Louisville, KY (SDF).Yesterday I was reading on macon.com and saw that Vision is planning to start commercial service to Macon, GA on March 25. Many airlines have tried this and failed but Vision is planning to start flying twice per week between Macon (MCN) and Destin, FL (VPS). The airport at Destin/Fort Walton Beach is actually on Eglin AFB and the airline expects many of its customers to be air force personnel travelling between Eglin AFB and Robins AFB for business. This route will also accommodate vacationers taking a long weekend on the Florida panhandle as the round trip flights will be Friday and Monday.

Vision is planning to make Destin its hub as it is expanding to serve 20 cities across the southeast from Destin on routes that are non-existent or unfrequently served by other carriers. Vision will use Boeing 737's for some flights and Dornier 328's for other flights. Currently, most flights are on an introductory sale of $49+ tax one-way but even when prices settle down, expect most prices to be between $80 and $100 + tax one-way.

We've seen several airlines try and fail but Vision's strategy here might work. Vision is not a startup company - it's been in business for 16 years running charter flights for the wealthy and for sports teams as well as doing tours of the Grand Canyon. The Vision headquarters are now located in Suwanee, GA, a suburb of Atlanta.

http://www.macon.com/2011/01/29/1428367/vision-airlines-details-its-flights.html