Interesting article about the dwindling service at many northeast airports due to problems at US Airways. The article focuses on the impact for Ithaca as US Airways is cutting all flights from Ithaca to Pittsburgh as of November as it dismantles its hub there. They will still fly to LaGuardia and Philadelphia - for now. Better make those Harvard game travel plans now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/13/business/13air.html
This is the problem of Cornell being in a population backwater, like Dartmouth. Hard to get and keep air carriers. Also hard to attract a good professor if the prof's spouse is a professional, too. If only Corning Glass were in Ithaca, not Elmira, or if IBM's Binghamton / Vestal operations were here. Ithaca would be a lot better place to if the population were twice as big. You still wouldn't need a traffic copter reporter, but there'd be more opportunities for work, for support of a regional jet, etcetera.
USAir's departure is short term. If there was enough to support 4 flights out every day, and Continental's presence a couple years ago, someone will be back. Most likely Continental.
The article also pointed out you could take a town car to Syracuse and that plus the Syracuse-to-wherever flight would be cheaper than Ithaca to wherever. I believe it was Alfred Kahn who pointed that out. (And Syracuse is a darn sight closer than Hartford or Burlington is to Dartmouth.)
Mark Anbinder gets himself quoted again.:-}
If you're quoted once in the NY Times or WS Journal and you sound knowledgeable, the paper goes back to you again and again for quotes. Then they realize you're over-used and they back off, then come back in three or six months. Right now on the tech side, for instance, Rob Enderle and Rick Doherty are hot. They're always quotable and they think in written sound bites -- something that sounds good in 2 sentences. (Plus they know what they're talking about.) Some academic type who needs three paragraphs to get to the point risks having just one sentences of his treatise being used ... and not being called upon again.