As Norfolk International Airport prepared to announce the arrival of its ninth domestic air carrier earlier this year, airport president and CEO Mark Perryman teased another exciting announcement.
In January, Perryman told Norfolk's City Council that international flights to the Caribbean could start flying out of Norfolk this year.
It's been a long road to attract international air service to the region, and Perryman said airport officials are confident that demand is there.
The airport has set records for passenger traffic for three consecutive years and is in the midst of a $1 billion overhaul that includes a modern customs and Border Patrol facility.
WHRO sat down with Perryman to talk about where the efforts to attract international flights stand, what's been holding Norfolk back and what's changed to make now the time.
WHRO: People in Hampton Roads have been asking for international flights for some time. You've said you're working on it. Where does that effort stand?
Mark Perryman: So when people think of international, they think of scheduled service. 'I can book a flight, I can fly out of here and go to wherever.' And that is hopefully coming soon.
We're talking initially, probably, Caribbean destinations: Cancun, Montego Bay, Dominican Republic. Something like that, I think, is in our foreseeable future with our existing carriers, and that's not going to take a lot of additional work. It's really a matter of us working with the carrier to match the aircraft, the schedule and the demand altogether in the right time frame.
But when people really think about international service, they're saying, 'Well, how do I get to Europe?' That's where everyone is really, when they're thinking international, what they're really talking about. That is also in the works. We are talking with what we call foreign flag carriers.
WHRO: What's prevented Norfolk from securing these foreign carriers before now, and what's changed?
MP: It's not our physical facility. We do have the runway lengths to go to Europe, especially with new-generation aircraft. There's a certain class of single-aisle aircraft that now can fly long range, 4700 nautical miles. We're within that range now.
Would we fill a 300- to 350-seat aircraft? No. Will we fill 185- to 220-seat aircraft? Probably. Our numbers show that if we were to take all of our European demand, we could afford and fill that 250-seat aircraft twice a week.
So what's held us up in the past is, one, I think having that right aircraft to match with our market. And then two, I think having the understanding of the whole community in terms of what it's going to take and getting everybody on board with saying, 'Hey, we understand this is an economic issue. We're willing to support it, and we're willing to put our money where our mouth is. And we're willing to put people in seats.'
WHRO: When you talk about community backing and putting our money where our mouth is, what do we need to be doing now to get a transatlantic carrier?
MP: European service is going to require some level of incentives to get those carriers to come here, because it's a very competitive market.
We're competing with Fort Lauderdale. We're competing with Kansas City. Up until recently, we were competing with Indianapolis, who just recently landed international transatlantic service with Aer Lingus.
Those cities are putting up incentives — minimum revenue guarantees, waiving landing fees and things of that nature. Indianapolis just got service, as I said, from Aer Lingus. Between the airport and the local community and the state of Indiana — that's the other component we need — they're putting up $19 million over the next several years in minimum revenue guarantee to launch that service.
(Incentives are) geared towards backing the airline during that period where the service is getting established. And if you can't establish the service in two to three years and get it operating on its own without need for economic incentives, then it's not going to happen, and they're going to pull that service, so that it's not a 'now and forever, we're subsidizing.' It's for a very short period of time to help guarantee the airline that they're not going to lose money on what they may view as a gamble coming into our market.
We see it and we have the numbers and the statistics that say we don't think it's that big of a gamble, but we have to balance that with the airline. And again, we're competing with others.
This new aircraft type that I was referring to earlier, some of those destinations are outside of the range of that aircraft. In order to serve Europe to Fort Lauderdale, for instance, they're going to have to use a big, wide-body aircraft. But to use that single aisle, they can't get to Fort Lauderdale from the European market. But they can get to here.
And so that's the type of matching all these pieces. It's a big jigsaw puzzle if you really think about it and we're trying to get all the pieces aligned.
WHRO: And how long will that take? When should people start seeing these flights boarding in Norfolk?
MP: I think we can foreseeably see Caribbean service either this winter/fall going into next year. As far as transatlantic, we have one (carrier) in particular that we're talking to that says probably calendar year '27 is kind of where they're looking. However, if we can get to them and put the right incentive package in front of them sooner, we could move that up a year.
Note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
