Would passengers flying from Columbia Regional Airport rather go to Memphis, Tenn., or Kansas City?

That’s one of the questions officials will examine as they evaluate three bids to replace Columbia’s essential air service, or EAS.

Out of three proposals the U.S. Department of Transportation received Friday to provide Columbia with the federally subsidized air service, two propose several daily round-trip flights to Kansas City, and another proposes service to Memphis. All three would use twin-engine turbo-prop aircraft. A fourth proposal did not include service to Columbia.

Air Midwest, citing financial troubles, filed a notice to terminate federally guaranteed EAS to 11 Midwestern cities in late January, and the transportation department requested bids Feb. 1 to replace EAS in nine of them.

Air Midwest, a subsidiary of Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group, operates locally as U.S. Airways. The company currently collects a federal subsidy of $598,751 annually to provide Columbia with 24 round trips a week to Kansas City. After its January announcement to terminate service, it nearly tripled its fares to $169 for a one-way ticket.

The three airlines submitting proposals by the Friday deadline to take over Columbia’s service were Eagan, Minn.-based Mesaba Aviation Inc.; Cheyenne, Wyo.-based Great Lakes Aviation; and Honolulu-based Hawaii Island Air.

Here’s a closer look at each company and its bid:

● Mesaba Airlines, a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines operating as Northwest Airlink, claims to be the oldest regional airline in the United States. The airline serves more than 75 cities in the United States and Canada from Northwest Airline’s three major hubs: Detroit, Minneapolis and Memphis.

In its proposal, Mesaba said it would provide Columbia with either two or three round-trip flights to Memphis daily - minus one of those flights on Saturday and Sunday - at an average one-way fare of $95. It would use 34-seat Saab 340 airplanes to provide service.

Mesaba requested a subsidy of $891,261 to provide two daily round trips and a subsidy of more than $2.1 million to provide three daily round trips.

● Great Lakes Airlines currently provides scheduled passenger service at 44 airports in 12 states, according to its Web site, and serves many smaller communities in the West and Midwest with EAS. It has agreements with United Airlines and Frontier Airlines and uses Denver as its major hub.

Great Lakes’ proposal was the closest to what is provided today, with four daily round-trip flights from Columbia to Kansas City using 19-seat Beechcraft 1900D planes at an average fare of $74.54 one way. This would require an annual subsidy of nearly $1.6 million.

● Hawaii Island Air’s proposal marks a new line of service for the company, which primarily has offered flights among the Hawaiian islands for the past 30 years. The airline proposed using agreements it has with United and Continental airlines to give several options for Columbia, all of which included two or three daily round-trip flights to Kansas City on 37-seat deHavilland Dash-8 aircraft. The subsidies required for the options range from a low of about $1.3 million annually for two round-trip flights a day to a high of nearly $2 million annually for three round-trip flights a day.

The fares are based on when tickets are purchased, with a ticket purchased seven or more days before the flight costing $49 one way and a walk-up ticket costing as much as $109 one way.

City Manager Bill Watkins said he has not yet seen the proposals, but his top concern is examining the reliability of the airlines. Watkins said although he hasn’t looked into service to Memphis yet, it is important to ensure it provides connectivity to other destinations.

"If you can’t get good connections into Memphis, it might not do anybody any good," Watkins said.

Transportation department spokesman Bill Mosley said the DOT will now solicit comments from the city governments regarding the proposals before evaluating them and making a final selection.

Mosley said the department also considers the airlines’ service reliability and track record, their ability to connect passengers and the amount of subsidy requested to provide service.

"We are asking for the communities to quickly give us comments, although we have not posted a strict deadline on it yet," Mosley said. "The quicker they come, the more quickly we can come to a decision."

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