Chattanooga Pulse

The Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport has taken a lot of hits over the past several years, largely through word-of-mouth conversations amongst friends who decry the “high prices” and instead rely on one of the several shuttle services to drive them to either Atlanta or Nashville.

Yet, a search through the various travel websites like ChattanoogaHasTravel.com (like The Pulse, owned by Brewer Media Group), Travelocity.com and the airlines own Orbitz.com, one quickly finds that the rates to fly in and out of Chattanooga have become much more reasonable.

I was invited recently to be a guest speaker at a conference in Richmond, Virginia.  With about six weeks lead time, I figured I could probably find a decent round-trip fare, even allowing for the lack of a direct flight.  So I logged on and went fare-hunting.  To my surprise, the best combination of price and travel times ended up with the old southern standby, Delta, and flying out Chattanooga.

Even taking into account parking, the entire trip was still $10 cheaper than taking the shuttle van to Atlanta.  Okay, so some of you may not think that a mere ten bucks is that much of a difference, but the fact that I am writing this blog report from somewhere over North Georgia instead of from the crowded backseat of a bumpy van made it worth it, at least for me.

If you haven’t been to the airport itself recently, or at all, you are missing out on one of the better designed regional airports I’ve been through, and one of the friendliest.  Even the normal morose TSA agents had smiles and “good mornings” and “have a nice flights”, which may be more indicative of being Chattanoogans than anything else.  But having dealt with TSA agents in many other airports, trust me when I tell you how refreshingly odd dealing with a happy and helpful TSA agent really is.

Of course, with the current economy, not as many people are flying as they used to, and the airlines are hurting.  Though due to a combination of lower fuel prices and more streamlined operations, the airlines aren’t hurting as badly as before or as they could be given the recession. Chattanooga does need a efficient and profitable airport to compete economically – one of the things that helped bring Volkswagen to town was the airport – so it’s nice to see that things appear to be looking up for the future of air travel in Chattanooga.