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Do Fewer Flights Mean Curtailed Opportunities?

Jason O'Halloran
/
Flickr

The July 4th holiday weekend is often labeled as “one of the busiest travel weekends” of the year. If your travel plans involve leaving Milwaukee by air, you might have noticed it’s a little harder to get from here to there than it once was.

The number of airlines that fly out of General Mitchell International Airport has decreased, especially as airlines have merged, and the number of flights has shrunk along with it.Writer Larry Sandler has been exploring the past, present and future of the airport in a three-part series in the Milwaukee Business Journal. He says the flight reduction could affect not just the family vacation, but Milwaukee's business prospects.

"It is important to the business community," says Sandler. "It's not crucial, in the sense that it's going to make or break most company's decisions about whether to come here or not. But it it is important to business to have connections to their customers and to their employees if they have locations in other places."