In the wake of a number of Red Tape Florida reports on the flailing Tallahassee airport, local government officials are rolling out a plan to throw money at airlines in hopes they’ll stay for more than a weekend. In the latest Blueprint agenda item, TLH outlines its strategy to use Minimum Revenue Guarantees (MRGs)—basically taxpayer-backed safety nets for airlines—as a shiny new tool to lure carriers into offering new routes. Of course, they stop just short of calling them “subsidies,” preferring euphemisms like “community-sponsored incentives.” But let’s call a spade a spade: if public dollars are handed to private airlines to offset risk and cover losses, that’s a subsidy in everything but the name.
Right now, TLH says its hands are tied by FAA grant rules that limit airport-sponsored incentives to things like waiving facility fees and tossing in a few marketing dollars. Since other cities are sweetening the pot with off-airport money—courtesy of city halls, tourism boards, chambers of commerce, and anyone else with a public checkbook—TLH wants in on the game. So the solution? A $10 million MRG fund over 15 years, sourced from “economic development resources.” Translation: tax dollars from sources they hope no one scrutinizes too closely.
That sounds lovely—until you remember this airport has been down this runway before.
Take AirTran. In the early 2000s, the city threw more than $2 million in revenue guarantees and marketing support at them. The moment the money dried up, so did AirTran’s interest in Tallahassee. Or look at JetBlue, the most recent flame. TLH finally wooed the airline into launching service to Fort Lauderdale in 2024, thanks in part to over $3 million pledged by eager local boosters. But the route was pulled within months. It turns out you can’t bribe people into buying plane tickets they don’t want.
The math is optimistic. According to TLH’s consultants, a $10 million investment will miraculously return $1.1 billion in economic impact and over 1,100 new jobs. How? Well, that part is fuzzy. The estimates are “based on assumptions” about aircraft size, load factors, airline strategy, and other conveniently unprovable forecasts. But don’t worry—they have charts.
In practice, MRGs guarantee airlines a minimum revenue threshold. If a flight underperforms, the public makes up the difference. TLH even gives an example: a hypothetical airline flying from TLH to LaGuardia is guaranteed $1.5 million, but if it only makes $1.2 million, the city writes a check for the shortfall. Any leftover MRG funds get “rolled over” to lure in the next suitor.
There’s a notable bit of revisionist history in how they discuss JetBlue’s now-defunct route to Fort Lauderdale. It flopped due to low performance—but TLH says that, had they had an MRG in place, they could’ve saved it. Or maybe just delayed the inevitable? The silver lining: fares dropped, traffic surged briefly, and they estimate consumers saved $620,000. Of course, JetBlue also bailed, but hey—stats!
The document tries to spin this all as a win-win. Airlines reduce risk, passengers get lower fares, the city gets “economic impact,” and no one dares say “corporate welfare” out loud. But at its core, this is a bet that taxpayer-funded parachutes will entice airlines to stick around longer than the next quarterly earnings call. Whether that’s smart economic development or just subsidized hope remains to be seen.