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I know many will dismiss this as “Well, it is his job to say that.” But the truth is this: Given all the volatility in the commercial air industry the past two years, Central Iowans still have a solid level of airline service available. After all, we are a small commercial community.

Many communities our size saw carriers turn off the lights and walk away during that time. Others saw service dramatically cut. Here in Des Moines (DSM), we didn’t escape unscathed. Early on, we lost 20 percent of our capacity (available seats). Then, Delta pulled Salt Lake City (SLC) and Cincinnati. United yanked the nonstop to Los Angeles (LAX) and Continental stopped service to Cleveland. Most recently, American Eagle announced it will discontinue service to St. Louis.

Allegiant picked up LAX. Cincinnati is coming back in June. Branson (with connecting service to Austin and Houston) is coming in May. And, if history is any indication, SLC will come back and go away three more times before I retire. I know people want to believe otherwise, but I cannot make anybody come here to serve this market. And I can’t stop them from coming here if they want to. The bottom line is that it takes the entire community to attract a carrier.

I am happy to say that come June 1, we will be within spittin’ distance of 10,000 seats per day again, and 18 nonstop destinations is not far short of our best-ever count of 20. Central Iowans will have the services and fares of four low-fare carriers available to them. AirTran’s return to this market set off a series of fortunate events. With AirTran’s connecting hub service to Milwaukee (MKE), Republic (which owns Frontier and Midwest) responded by making Frontier’s service available at MKE. Add this to Allegiant, AirTran and Branson AirExpress, and Central Iowa will have four low-cost carriers. Check some fares. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. In general this is pushing down fares.

With all this mess going on, DSM management still was able to reduce the cost of doing business for three years running. Airlines like to see that, but we didn’t see what that is supposed (in theory) to produce: lower fares. We also trimmed the budget by 10 percent and remodeled the concourses. People have been complaining (and rightly so) about that for years. It’s just that when you have to generate all of your budget (DSM gets no general fund tax money), it takes a while to do cosmetic things; details like keeping the runways open keep getting in the way.

Let’s hope people in Central Iowa (and other areas, too) keep generating enough demand to keep these services here. That is the secret. It is all about demand. Airlines are going to put supply where they see demand. If Central Iowans continue to displace their demand by driving to Omaha and Kansas City, those services will certainly stay there.

Roy Criss is the air service and public relations manager at Des Moines International Airport.