Round-trips to Houston could help casinos and also Coast residents
It seemed strange to me that one could have shot a cannon through our multimillion-dollar airport at 8 p.m. a few Sundays ago when I stopped to pick up lost luggage for a friend who had flown in earlier from Orlando. I offered to do that as I happened to be passing through on my way home from the New Orleans airport after having flown back there from Houston for my tri-weekly trek for cancer treatment. Why, you might ask, would I drive almost 100 miles to New Orleans to catch a flight to Houston when I live less than 15 miles from a perfectly lovely and expensively expanded "international" airport, especially when I'm an advocate of spending money locally? Because the lowest price, non-refundable three-week advance ticket from Gulfport to Houston is $848 while the same ticket for the same dates from New Orleans to Houston is $138.
When I went to each of the seven airlines listed on the flygpt.com Web site and plugged in identical departure/arrival dates, changing only the destination city from Orlando to Houston, my frustration turned to anger. One can get to Orlando from Gulfport for half the price one can get to Houston. One Orlando round-trip fare is $98. That airline, along with some of the others, doesn't even go to Houston.
Outside of the drive-in market, guess where most of our casino players live? You guessed it - in and around the Orlando/Tampa area. Another airline flies only to Charlotte. I can pretty much assure you there would be much more traffic to/from Houston.
I don't know the last time we tried to "grow" the market around the Houston area because the powers that be believe people won't travel here when they can visit the casinos in the Lake Charles area, but the throngs of us who live locally traveling to Houston for medical treatment (that's another story for a different day) would appreciate the casinos trying again. Because, obviously, that is the only industry that controls what reasonably fared flights are available.
This is in no way a slight to the casinos. I admire the fact they do what needs to be done to take care of their business. Let's see if we can secure some decent flights, other than to the East, that can keep the airport busy until at least 8 p.m. on a weekend.
SHERRY SEYMOUR
Ocean Springs
Shakespeare has yet another Green Bay play
A part of Shakespeare has an act to play in Green Bay's 2008 season, "To Start or Not to Start Brett Favre." This should be a no-brainer:
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