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Show Frontier Files Reply To Moab Answer Frontier Ail lines last vm'oK filed a ''Pl l t ho ;iiium of I 1. id AijiMU'ios coiuvnuni; tho roinioM for suspension of service ser-vice to Moab. In their i epl , Kron-lior Kron-lior officials stated that it concurred iil (hat portion of (ho tiah Agencies' Agen-cies' Answer whioli proposed pro-posed that the matter should be for hearing. hear-ing. Frontier also asked that the hearing be e- m 'edited beean.se scheduled sched-uled improvements at Moab will t.ost si.ii.ooi), Part of which will be federal fed-eral funds, to improve the field. I'he airline officials also stated that although pa, moms to Frontier in the lorni of federal sub-Md. sub-Md. have exceeded the cost of providing ser- iee to Moab, the company com-pany feels that aelual subsidy received is not really relevant to ilu. b'Kal determination as to whether the public convenience and necessity necess-ity require the continuation contin-uation of Frontier's service at Moab. According Acc-ording lo the reply, "Subsidy rales change from time to time (as wilt Class Hate VI). and it is irrelevant from a leKal standpoint whether the (Jovernment at a particular par-ticular point in time is in fact making adequate payments. Rather it is the volume of subsidy need which must be assessed ass-essed (along with other factors such as isol-a isol-a t i o n, passengers boarded, bo-arded, etc.) in determine determ-ine whether certificated services are required by the public convenience and necessity." Frontier also contested contest-ed the I'tah Agencies statement that it has neglected its smaller cities and that its entry into larger markets has been inimical to its Local Service duties. "Frontier," the reply stales, "points with pride to (he service it has rendered to communities comm-unities such as Moab, particularly during those periods when the subsidy paid was nowhere no-where near adequate to compensate it for services ser-vices rendered and Frontier lost millions of dollars in the process." The Frontier statement then indicated that access acc-ess to larger markets had enabled the company to offer better service to its smaller communities commun-ities by providing online and through-plane service ser-vice to major metropolitan metrop-olitan destinations and to use excess profits from these subsidy-in-elibible routes to reduce Frontier's subsidy need for service to small communities. Frontier officials also attempted to discredit the proposal of Utah Agencies that it support a commuter type of service ser-vice to smaller communities comm-unities and stated that cities such as Moab are small and "simply cannot generate enough traffic to make a 'Frontier 'Fron-tier Commuter System' economically viable.'' Frontier concluded its remarks to the CAB by requesting that a hearing hear-ing on the application for suspension be set for the near future. |