Quincy airport director calls service by Southern Airways ‘horrible’ as monthly enplanements dip below 200

QUINCY — While city officials wait to hear from the U.S. Department of Transportation about its future essential air service (EAS) provider for Quincy Regional Airport, the current EAS provider’s service continues to deteriorate.

Southern Airways Express, based in Palm Beach, Fla., has a goal of 833 passengers a month at the Quincy airport with an annual yearly goal of 10,000 passengers. Hitting that goal allows the airport to receive a $1 million federal grant. However, the airport topped 400 passengers just once in the final five months of 2024. 

The numbers so far in 2025 are even more bleak, with 184 passengers in January and 185 passengers in February. Quincy Regional Airport Director Bill Lantz said those monthly figures are the lowest he can remember since he has been employed at the airport.

“On paper? (Southern Airways is doing) about 50 percent worse,” Lantz said after Wednesday’s Aeronautics Committee meeting. “We need about 830-plus boardings a month to stay on track, and we were boarding in the mid-400s. Now that number has since fallen off to less than 200 boardings per month.

“It’s horrible. These boardings directly reflect on upper-level management of Southern Airways and what they’re doing.”

Southern Airways had 4,710 enplanements in 2023 and 4,860 in 2024. By comparison, Cape Air was Quincy’s EAS provider in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, and it had 4,929 enplanements that year.

Southern Airways took over for Cape Air as the EAS provider in Quincy in December 2022. It agreed to a four-year contract to provide 18 round-trip flights per week to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and St. Louis Lambert International Airport, utilizing single-engine nine-passenger Cessna Caravan planes with two pilots. Southern Airways was to receive nearly $17 million in federal subsidies over the four-year contract.

Within the first year of its contract, Southern Airways began to alter its weekly flight schedule because of a rise in cancelled flights and a decline in passengers. More complaints about Southern Airways’ service led to more dissatisfaction from customers and city officials in 2024, and Mayor Mike Troup began pushing to end the city’s contract with the airline in August.

Troup informed the Quincy City Council at its Sept. 23, 2024 meeting that the U.S. Department of Transportation had accepted the city’s request to replace Southern Airways Express.

Lantz says Southern Airways’ service has somehow gotten worse.

“Southern had over 80 percent of its fleet grounded at one point,” he said. “They started repairing items and got some aircraft back up operational, but most of the aircraft that was operational were brand-new and had just come off the assembly line, with a few others that were in remarkable shape. They’re still not back on track yet. Every time they start to get back on track, they have another setback.”

Lantz says more flights between Quincy and Chicago are having an extra stop added in Burlington — a violation of the EAS contract.

“The fact that we’re seeing more flights tied with Burlington just goes to prove how short on aircraft they really are,” he said.

Lantz also said the airport’s schedule changes daily.

“There’s no consistency. It’s hindering our numbers,” he said. “People can’t count on the airline to fly a consistent schedule. (Southern Airways) should be locked into a set schedule every day. They should fly so many flights to so many locations on roughly the same timelines. They’re not meeting any of them.

“I’ll get the memo tonight after 4:30 p.m. or as late as 8:30 p.m. on what tomorrow’s schedule looks like. There’s no way as a paying passenger to know what you can expect the next day. You just don’t know, and it’s not getting any better. I have a call every other week, and I intend to scrutinize them more about that, but it’s going to fall on deaf ears.”

He has reported to the Federal Aviation Administration two instances of Southern Airways aircraft having mechanical issues in Quincy, forcing the closing of a runway on one occasion and the entire airport on a second occasion.

“I hate to say it, but the sooner we can get (Southern Airways) out of here and get a reliable air carrier, the better we’re going to be,” Lantz said.

The exasperation continues to grow for Troup.

“We weren’t happy when (enplanements were at) 400 something per month, which wasn’t going to get us to even 5,000 enplanements in a year,” he said. “Now it’s less than half of that. Now Bill’s reporting other concerns on mechanical, then you have the service level and the number of flights … everything continues to deteriorate, which is frustrating.”

However, the Quincy airport didn’t surpass 600 passengers in a month last year, totaling 4,977 for the year — a monthly average of 414. The passenger count was 4,789 in 2022.