Business
City of La Crosse may be ready to donate money to fund to help airlines serving regional airport
Leaders of La Crosse County have committed up to $250,000 to a fund that would help maintain airline service to the La Crosse Airport. Now, it’s the city of La Crosse’s turn to pitch in.
On Thursday night, the city council finance committee could vote on a similar donation to the “minimum revenue guarantee” program for the airport. A group supporting the airport hopes to increase the back-up fund to a million-and-a-half dollars, as a possible way to attract more airlines to La Crosse.
In January, the county board voted to provide up to $250,000 to that special fund, designed to reimburse airlines that use the airport, if they don’t meet their revenue goals during the year.
American is the only major airline now serving La Crosse, after Delta ended service to LSE in 2023. However, Delta reportedly has shown interest in resuming flights in and out of the city. A proposed bus service between La Crosse and the Minneapolis airport was supposed to begin trips in April, but that plan has been scrapped.
nick
March 6, 2025 at 8:37 am
A bad idea . I can drive to Rochester ,MN and have service to MSP get direct flights for much cheaper.
I
R Head
March 6, 2025 at 8:54 am
If you quit giving money to the homeless there is lots of money for the airport or maybe they could live at the end of a runway. You could kill two birds with one with one chunk of money
Libertarian Guy
March 6, 2025 at 10:43 am
City Council best think carefully on this issue. The only money they have to “donate“ is money confiscated from lacrosse taxpayers. The amounts to taxpayers subsidizing a large corporation, a corporation that sells shares on the stock exchange, gives dividends to shareholders, and it represents government picking winners and losers with the spoils being money paid by taxpayers. In short, this is nothing short of corporate welfare. The airline itself said they eliminated service to lacrosse because of a pilot shortage. It had nothing to do with money. If city leadership funds this, they are hypocrites. They talk about cutting funding for pools and libraries, while considering giving taxpayer money to Delta airlines to subsidize any losses they might incur serving the lacrosse community. and how long will this subsidy be provided one year only as an incentive or in perpetuity? Lacrosse County already made this mistake. I hope lacrosse does not act similarly.
nick
March 6, 2025 at 12:13 pm
Well stated libertarian guy.
I stand by what I stated. Why fly out of LaCrosse when youn have a lot more cheaper alternatives flying out of Minneapolis. I am done with the LaCrosse airport.
Returning is worse