What Economic Recovery? SeaPort shuts down route due to bad economy, yet to issue official press release, proof that east Idaho community leaders have head in a hole

On December 4, an east Idaho TV station reported that an airline route from Idaho Falls to Boise will stop service on December 31.

On December 5, the same east Idaho TV station did an update, after they talked to the President of Oregon based SeaPort Airlines.  Rob McKinney said that ticket sales in east Idaho not only weren’t enough, but had steadily declined from their  “…re-launch of flights between Idaho Falls and Boise.” (from July 23, 2011 SeaPort press release) back in July.

I got a response to my December 4 story about SeaPort closing down the IF/Boise/Pendleton route, from someone in the marketing office of SeaPort.  After correcting a few things they also confirmed that sales in east Idaho is just too bad to continue business: “There is an official explanation for the discontinuation of this service; there was not enough passenger traffic to continue flying the Idaho Falls-Boise route.”

By the way, for some reason, as of December 7 SeaPort still has not issued an official press release on their website.  The last press release is dated September 2, 2011.

This comes after months of eastern, and southeastern, Idaho business/community leaders telling us (through east Idaho media) that things were getting better!