San Antonio's international airport has been a convenient punching bag for politicians, but City Manager Sheryl Sculley is pumping the brakes, saying the criticism is not warranted, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
"We've been able to achieve twenty additional non-stop air service flights over the last 18 months," she tells Newsradio this week.
Sculley was one of several people praising Southwest Airlines at a press conference this week, where it was announced that the carrier would be adding non-stop flights to Oakland, the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and a direct flight to Oakland.
And while those, combined with the recent addition of a non-stop flight to Philadelphia, are feathers in the airport's cap, there is still concern about a negative effect on the city's economy.
Judge Nelson Wolff cited the lack of direct flights in the debate to pull out of the bid for Amazon's second headquarters"AT&T left. Even though we called Toyota, they didn’t consider us," he explains.
Toyota, instead, chose Plano, TX, for their North American Headquarters, despite the 30 minute drive to DFW International. Giles-Parscle, the San Antonio based tech startup which headed Donald Trump's very successful digital strategy in the 2016 election, recently moved its political operations to Florida, citing, again, the shortcomings of San Antonio International
.In his recent State of the County speech, Judge Wolff argued for study to look at reorganizing the city's assets
."There are some great assets at Port San Antonio that are just not being used.”
But Sculley this week praised the airport's current location."Its location is quite an asset. It's in the heart of the city making it very convenient," she explains.
She argues that, if the city wants more direct flights, we should be focusing on economic development instead of reimagining the airport."The market determines your non-stop air service."