World's busiest airport tries incentives to draw flights

Not even the world's busiest airport is above offering incentives as a way to tempt airlines to add new service.

Incentives will now be part of the toolkit for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International officials as they work to secure even more routes for the airport, already the world's busiest. That comes after the Atlanta City Council on Tuesday OK'd the establishment of a five-year, $2 million incentive program aimed at helping the airport with both new passenger airline routes and cargo services.

"With this new incentive program, Hartsfield-Jackson will be better positioned to attract additional passenger and cargo carriers to Atlanta," the airport's Interim General Manager Miguel Southwell says in a statement.

Atlanta's airport incentive program will kick in this summer, targeting international routes to cities with rapidly developing economies or home to robust cargo markets. In the airport's words, "the purpose of the program is to stimulate air service, particularly along routes that link Atlanta to cities located in countries that have some of the world's fastest-growing economies and air cargo traffic."

"As the world's busiest airport, we are continually looking at ways to grow new routes and expand our cargo capacity, and this will certainly boost our global competitiveness," Southwell adds.

The airport will waive a year's worth of landing fees for airlines that launch international routes that aren't already served from Atlanta. The program also will match up to 50% of an airline's marketing budget to promote the new route, with a cap of $25,000 for new passenger routes.

Atlanta says "additional waivers and incentives, such as a two-year waiver of landing fees," will be offered to airlines willing to add new routes to destinations in "the five major emerging economies" of Brazil, Russia, India, China or South Africa.

The Atlanta airport adds "carriers starting service to Africa, Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia will also receive extra consideration. Total fee waivers and promotional funds will be capped at $2 million a year on a first-come, first-served basis."

Though the program is open to both passenger and cargo carriers, Atlanta says in its statement that "the incentive program is primarily designed to develop the Airport as a cargo and logistics hub."

New-service incentives are common at many U.S. airports. However, they're used more frequently by smaller and mid-size airports that are looking to convince airlines to take a chance on a new route from their market. The incentives minimize airlines' risk in testing the demand in a new market, letting them launch service to see if it can become profitable.

"It's an industry tool," Jason Terrei, Atlanta airport's interim director of business development, said to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in March, which is when the airport decided to seek approval for the incentive fund. "When we meet with airlines, this is the first question they ask: Does Atlanta have an air service incentive program?"