Cape Air - History

History

The airline was co-founded in 1988 by company pilots Craig Stewart and Dan Wolf, and investor Grant Wilson. Initially, Cape Air flew between Provincetown and Boston in Massachusetts, but throughout the early 1990s new routes were added to destinations across southeastern New England. Services in Florida and the Caribbean were added in the late 1990s, and service in Micronesia commenced in 2004. In 1994, Cape Air and Nantucket Airlines merged and now offer hourly flights between Nantucket and Hyannis.

In late 2007, the airline began a new round of expansion in the Northeast and Midwest. On November 1, 2007, the airline began service between Boston and Rutland, Vermont, with three daily round trips. The route is subsidized by the U.S. government under the Essential Air Service (EAS) program.

With the help of a government grant, Cape Air expanded into Indiana on November 13, 2007, offering flights from Indianapolis to Evansville and South Bend. The airline did not get the passengers numbers needed to be financially successful once subsidies would come to an end. The last Cape Air flight in Indiana was on August 31, 2008.

The airline expanded into upstate New York in early 2008, following the sudden demise of Delta Connection carrier Big Sky Airlines. Cape Air began flying three daily round-trips on Essential Air Service routes from Boston to the Adirondack cities of Plattsburgh and Saranac Lake on February 12, 2008.

The airline continued its expansion into New York when they started to fly the EAS routes out of Albany to Watertown, Ogdensburg, and Massena, and Rutland Airport. Cape Air commenced service from Rockland, Maine, and Lebanon, New Hampshire, to Boston on November 1, 2008. Cape Air also flies to/from Westchester County Airport to/from Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, initially for seasonal summer flights, which has since become year round. The company recently purchased four additional Cessna 402's to assist with the recent growth.

Cape Air was also looking to offer service on the west coast. Cape Air submitted bids to offer service between Newport and Portland in the state of Oregon. The airline was hoping to be selected by the Newport city council to receive a financial grant to jump-start the service. Ultimately they lost out to SeaPort Airlines, which was able to get the service going sooner than the 2010 date that Cape Air had submitted.

The airline also operated in the mid-Atlantic region. Cape Air provided scheduled flights from both the Hagerstown Regional Airport and the Lancaster Airport to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Service out of BWI ended in October 2012.

In September 2010, the U.S. Department of Transportation selected Cape Air to fly a federally subsidized route connecting Augusta, Maine, and Boston. For serving the route, Cape Air receives an annual subsidy of $1.4 million from the federal Essential Air Service program, commonly known as EAS. Service to/from Augusta began in December 2010.

Cape Air operates EAS Service from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport to Cape Girardeau, MO; Kirksville, MO; Ft. Leonard Wood, MO; Marion, IL, Quincy, IL; and Owensboro, KY.

Cape Air has held discussions with airport officials to offer service between Pittsburgh International Airport and Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and Erie International Airport in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Cape Air is the largest independent regional airline in the United States and carried almost 700,000 passengers in 2011, with new routes driving steady increases over time. Cape Air offers up to 550 daily flights system wide.