State College Regional Airport announces more daily flights, possible future services

Representatives from the State College Regional Airport were at Tuesday’s Centre County Commissioners meeting to announce that the airport will be adding more daily flights to three major cities.

Centre County Airport Authority Executive Director Jim Meyer and the airport’s Terminal Manager Jason McMurtrie said that the airport will be adding a permanent daily flight to the Washington Dulles Airport, and temporary daily flights to both Philadelphia and Chicago, with the Washington Dulles and Philadelphia flights having been announced this spring.

The Washington Dulles flight, which started on Monday, is provided by United Airlines and is the airport’s third daily flight to that destination.

The Philadelphia flight will be provided by American Airlines and is going to be the airport’s fifth daily flight to that destination. McMurtrie told the CDT in an email that the airport recently added a fourth daily flight to Philadelphia on Aug. 6, but will be adding the fifth, temporary flight in October — the busiest month for the regional airport.

Meyer said at the meeting that daily Philadelphia flights will drop back down to four on Jan. 7, 2025.

Effective Sept. 1, the new daily Chicago flight will be provided by United Airlines and is going to be the airport’s fourth daily flight to the Windy City. For now, this flight will also be temporary, operating throughout the fall and winter months.

Some of the larger flights to Chicago will also feature larger airplanes with greater capacity, McMurtrie wrote.

“It will be a combination of aircraft with 50 seats to 76 seats,” McMurtrie wrote. “Many of which will have first class seating.”

These extra flights and larger planes come as a result of Penn State’s student move-in and the impending Penn State football season, each combining to make for the airport’s busiest season.

Despite Penn State’s influence on the number of flights at the airport, Meyer said that the airport should still be used by everyone from the Centre County region.

“I’d like to remind everybody that our airport is one of the major economic engines in this county,” Meyer said. “It’s not Penn State’s airport, it’s not the authority’s airport — it’s the community’s airport, and the more air service that we can provide, the stronger and better we are.”

In addition to these new flights, the State College Regional Airport is also looking to add two more amenities for airport-goers — a daily flight to Charlotte through American Airlines and the return of Delta Airlines to the airport.

The possibility of a daily Charlotte flight depends on whether American accepts the regional airport’s incentives — which may not be as much as it was in the past due to deadlines for past funding, McMurtrie wrote. In 2021, Centre County and other Centre Region municipalities created a nearly $300,000 incentive package to attract American Airlines to the airport for a Charlotte flight, but the airline declined to commit to the route at that time.

“We always offer incentives for a new route. The current incentives are not as big as the previous offer because some of the monies in the previous offer were from (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) dollars that the county pledged. Those monies had to be used by Dec. 31, 2023,” McMurtrie wrote. “Since American did not initiate service, those monies went to another qualifying project chosen by the Centre County Commissioners.”

No dates were provided for the possible new route.

As for Delta’s return, the international airline initially suspended service from the regional airport last June, citing a personnel shortage for the suspension.

More than a year later, McMurtrie is optimistic of an imminent Delta return, writing that the airline had “always told (State College Regional Airport) that their suspension of service was temporary,” and that the timeline of Delta’s expected return will be determined on “many factors related to aircraft and crews becoming available.”

For now though, American and United Airlines remain as the airport’s two partners.