U.S. Airways ends commercial service at Naples airport 06/15/2003 By ELIZABETH WENDT, ehwendt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx At about 10 minutes after 3 p.m. Saturday, a radio in the U.S. Airways=20 office at Naples Municipal Airport crackled to life. The voice belonged to= =20 a pilot on an incoming Beechcraft 1900 airplane. "In range," he said=20 simply, "for the last time." U.S. Airways had just flown its final=20 passenger flight into the Naples airport. The airline has ended its=20 operations at the airport, and the company's departure is perhaps the most= =20 significant take-off from the airport in months: U.S. Airways was the last= =20 commercial carrier to operate at the airport. Jennifer Rosage, a station coordinator for Air Midwest, the carrier for=20 U.S. Airways at the Naples airport, came from Little Rock, Ark., to help=20 pack up the airline's office. She usually opens stations, not closes them,= =20 she said. In her eight years at her job, Naples' airport was her first=20 closing, she said. "It's not really something I like to do," Rosage=20 said. After all, people work here, she said. And Naples is a nice area,=20 too. "But, it's something I really don't have a choice in doing," Rosage=20 said. By 3 p.m., the office looked like a college dorm room on the last=20 day of school. Plastic bags bulged with discarded papers. Cardboard boxes were filled with office equipment, all destined for some=20 other, still-operational station, Rosage said. One box would go to Little=20 Rock, another to New York. Another box would go to Key West, where Don=20 Spraetz is usually stationed. Like Rosage, Spraetz came to Naples to help=20 the office break down its operations. "It's always better to open them=20 than to close them," Rosage said as she packed. From the back of the=20 office, Spraetz agreed. "Yeah, that's right," he said. Terri Shierling, a part-time customer service agent for U.S. Airways at the= =20 Naples airport, said she took the position in early May. And although she=20 is still new to the work, she likes it and will miss it. "It's sad," she=20 said. "I enjoy this work. I enjoy my job." Former U.S. Airways flight=20 attendant Traci Smith stopped by the office to say her goodbyes. She lives= =20 in Naples, but was based in Charlotte, N.C., and her daily commute used to= =20 mean flying from Naples to Tampa to Charlotte, just to get to work. She is= =20 sad to see the airline go, for more than one reason, she said. It was=20 convenient to have a commercial carrier at the Naples airport. Now she will= =20 have to drive to Fort Myers or farther to pick up visiting family. "It was= =20 nice having this option," she said. On the more personal and less=20 practical side, there is what the Naples airport means to her. Smith met her husband in Naples when she was still a flight attendant, on=20 an overnight stopover. "It's very emotional," Smith said of the=20 closing. Just as the 19-passenger plane roared onto runway =97 a few= minutes=20 ahead of schedule =97 an afternoon rain began to pound the tarmac. Shierling= =20 and Spraetz dug out their orange and yellow raincoats, which they had=20 already packed, and gave their final set of landing signals to the=20 pilot. U.S. Airways' final flight into the airport wasn't crowded. It=20 wasn't even half-full. Sally and Mark Palczewski and their daughter Sara,= =20 7, were among the passengers. Mark Palczewski is in Naples for a computer=20 conference. With no commercial flights leaving Naples, the family will be= =20 driving to Bradenton and catching a flight out of Sarasota to return to=20 their home in Pennsylvania after their vacation, they said. Passengers=20 Mike Barile and Jody Cox flew in for a friend's wedding. It was their first= =20 time flying into Naples, they said. They didn't know it would also be=20 their last. "We got here just in time," Barile said. "Lucky us," Cox= added. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.carib-link.net/naparima/naps.html TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************