Frontier Airlines is saying goodbye to New Castle Airport in Wilmington, Del. That makes the second-smallest state the only one in the country without access to commercial passenger flights.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: If you want to fly in or out of Delaware, good luck, unless you have your own plane or the cash to charter one.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Delaware's is now the only state in the country that does not have access to commercial flights.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: That means Delawareans have to make the schlep to Philly or Baltimore if they want to fly.</s>SCOTT GOSS: To Philadelphia can take about 45 minutes to an hour. To Baltimore, it can be an hour to an hour and a half.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Scott Goss, a reporter for The News Journal of Wilmington says Frontier Airlines quietly withdrew from Newcastle Airport last week. It had been the only airline offering service in the state.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Frontier isn't the first to depart Delaware. Since the 1960s, United, Delta and U,S. Airways are about the companies that have come and gone.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: The problem is Delaware's proximity to those other cities. Scott Goss says Frontier began canceling flights last October. That's when it started adding flights out of Philadelphia International Airport.</s>SCOTT GOSS: Those connecting flights it's able to get there may be more profitable for the company, but it wasn't that the service wasn't used or wasn't popular here in Delaware.</s>ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: In fact, Goss says, people were using the airport. Flights were more than 80 percent full.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: But there's no regulation that says Frontier or any airline has to commit to an airport.</s>SCOTT GOSS: Airlines are not required to sign any type of contract promising to provide service for any length of time. They can come and go as they please.</s>RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So this is what Delawareans get - turbulence.