ExpressJet Airlines' final flight from Tulsa was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. The Houston-based regional carrier has said it will end its service from Tulsa to Albuquerque, N.M., and three California destinations — San Diego, Ontario/Los Angeles and Sacramento — this weekend.
Earlier this summer, ExpressJet, which is a unit of Continental Airlines, ended its daily service between Tulsa and two Texas towns, San Antonio and Austin.
Last month, Jim Ream, ExpressJet's president and chief executive officer, said rising fuel prices have made the cuts necessary.
Denver-based Frontier Airlines ended its three daily round-trip flights between Tulsa and Denver earlier this year, also citing fuel costs. Frontier filed for bankruptcy protection in April.
Meanwhile, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines has said it will begin twice-daily flights between Tulsa and Denver on Nov. 2. However, Southwest also said it will cut two Tulsa flights in January, reducing the number of daily round trips to Phoenix and St. Louis from three to two.
"This is in response to the slow traffic period (from) January through March," Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said. "Systemwide, we are making just a few changes and it's possible some of these flights will come back after March."
Two other airlines also have said they will drop Tulsa flights. United Airlines will eliminate a daily nonstop flight to Los Angeles on Sept. 2, while Continental Airlines will drop its two daily flights to Cleveland on Sept. 6.
Tulsa airport spokeswoman Alexis Higgins says that after the cuts, the airport will have 69 flights a day in September. That's a 14.8 percent decrease since September 2007.
"Any time there is reduced capacity, there is reduced income from landing fees, reduced rentals from gate space and reduced ticket counter leases," Higgins said. "Ultimately, we'll see reduced numbers of passengers and potentially higher fares. We could also see a reduction in concession and parking revenue."
Tulsa Airports Director Jeff Mulder said potential flight cuts were considered during the airport budgeting process for the current fiscal year, which began July 1. He said he doubts there will be job cuts at the airport.
Editor's note: The headline previously had a grammatical error and used it's instead of its.
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R. they are ending OKC service on Sept. 2, just like Tulsa.
And Paul, they closed their doors, they went out of business nationally, which I hate, they were great to fly with.
Grammar lesson of the day: An apostrophe in "it's" means "it is". Therefore, the headline reads "Express Jet flies it is last flight out of Tulsa airport Saturday."
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And Paul, they closed their doors, they went out of business nationally, which I hate, they were great to fly with.