AWE Founder to head Project Roam

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PITTSBURGH - A new discount airline will begin servicing nine
destinations from Pittsburgh International Airport in June, with plans
to expand to 39 destinations - and to hire 2,100 employees - within
five years, officials, including the founder of America West Airlines,
announced Tuesday.

The announcement - made by Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey,
former America West and Western Pacific airlines Chief Executive
Officer Edward Beauvais, and other officials - appears to at least
partly answer questions about how the county would replace US Airways
if the Arlington, Va.-based airline eventually pulls its hub from
Pittsburgh, as it has threatened to do since emerging from Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection in March.

While Allegheny County Airport Authority board Chairman Glenn Mahone
called the new low-fare airline "the perfect antidote for the anxiety
that this region has been ex-Continued from Page One


periencing," Roddey said the new airline, which has not been named but
has a working title of "Project Roam," will be good for western
Pennsylvania whether or not US Airways keeps its hub here. Roddey said
the market needs more competition.

"This is good news for Pittsburgh and as far as U.S. Airways is
concerned, this plan was modeled as if US Airways will stand and fight.
And if they do anything less than that, this plan would accelerate,"
Roddey said.

Beauvais is leading the effort to start the new airline and he
introduced Travis Tanner, who has 30 years of experience in the travel
and leisure industries, as Project Roam's president and chief executive
officer.

Beauvais and others would not answer specific questions regarding the
airline's finances, citing Securities and Exchange Commission rules,
but did say no public financing would be used to start the airline. Any
incentives offered to this airline would be offered to other airlines
at the airport, including U.S. Airways, Roddey said.

"The good news is, and I can't get into the details, we will be
financed in a way that we'll have staying power and I'll just leave it
at that," Tanner said.

Officials plan to start operating by the second quarter of 2004 and
will start the process to obtain certification from the Federal
Aviation Association this week.

The airline will eventually offer fares as low as $49 for one-way trips
to destinations such as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and $99 for
one-way trips to places such as Las Vegas and Dallas, officials said.

Tanner said the airline's focus on customer service will set them apart
from others. The airline will exclusively fly Boeing 737-700 aircraft,
which will seat a dozen in business class and 114 in coach class. Each
flight, no matter how short, will offer in-flight entertainment such as
television, video games and pay-per-view movies.

"This is going to be an airplane where people are going to get on and
say, 'This is built for someone who likes to fly or doesn't like to fly
but has to,"' Tanner said.

The airline will primarily cut costs by flying just one type of
aircraft, Tanner said.

The Boeing 737 owns a 92 percent share of the discount airline market,
Bradley Till, the Boeing Co.'s regional director of product marketing
of commercial aircraft. Low-fare airline like to use the aircraft in
part because it can fly short and long distances, he said.

US Airways has said it may pull out of the airport, in Imperial just
west of Pittsburgh, if it doesn't get as much as $863 million in
financial aid or improvements for its hubs in Pittsburgh and
Philadelphia.

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said last week that the airline has
committed to keeping its flight schedule at the airport virtually
unchanged through next September as a sign of good faith in the ongoing
negotiations.

County and state officials have said, however, that they can't give US
Airways the key thing it wants - a major reduction in the $500 million
debt the airline owes on a new terminal built in 1992.

Roddey, a Republican, is running for re-election to a second four-year
term in November.

BL.
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Brad Littlejohn | Email:
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