Skybus will add nightly flights from Chicopee

Skybus Airlines, the ultra cheap Ohio start-up that last week became the only airline offering scheduled jet service to Portsmouth, N.H., this summer will become the only airline of any kind serving another New England destination: Chicopee.

Skybus said yesterday it will begin offering nightly flights to its Columbus hub from Westover Municipal Airport , alongside the Air Force Reserve base of the same name, on July 16. Skybus will be the first airline to offer service there since a short-lived start-up offered propeller-plane flights to LaGuardia Airport in New York for about six months in the 1980s.

As with all its flights, Skybus promises at least 10 $10 one-way tickets on every flight of its 144-seat jets, not counting taxes and fees. Its fares don't include any of the usual airline accoutrements: checked baggage, food, drink, blankets, and pillows.

Offering quick turnaround service primarily out of underutilized, inexpensive airports on the far fringes of metropolitan areas, like Westover, is another key to Skybus's plans to make a profit even charging very low fares. In addition to using Portsmouth to serve the Boston market and Westover for Springfield, and Hartford, the airline is serving Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, through an airport in Bellingham, Wash., and Los Angeles through Burbank, Calif. Two other July destinations it unveiled yesterday are St. Augustine, Fla., and San Diego.

Allan W. Blair , the chief executive of the Westover Metropolitan Development Corp. and head official overseeing the Chicopee airport, said, "We're really excited about the prospects for Skybus. We have every reason to think that the service will still be here and actually be enhanced 18 months from now" and beyond.

Local officials estimate 2 million people live within a 90-minute radius of the airport, among them 120,000 students at 32 colleges and two state universities for whom no-frills, low-fare air travel may be especially appealing. The airport is about two miles off the Massachusetts Turnpike.

"This creates another portal into the western New England market, and going from here, the service connects to a lot of markets like Florida and the West Coast that this market is interested in," Blair said.

However, because the flights from Chicopee to Columbus leave at 7:18 p.m., travelers looking to make outbound connections will generally have to stay overnight in Columbus and fly out the next morning. Initially airport officials expect, as has been the pattern so far at Portsmouth, more people fly Skybus in to New England from elsewhere in the country than outbound to Columbus and beyond.

Unlike Portsmouth, where parking is free, Westover officials plan to charge for parking but haven't decided how much yet.

From its heyday as a Cold War air base, Westover has one of the longest and widest runways of any airport in New England, an 11,600-foot-long, 300-foot-wide main strip used to serve huge C-5 Galaxy military transport planes.

Skybus chief executive Bill Dieffenderffer had no comment on what, if any, additional New England destinations it envisions adding but stressed that with $160 million in start-up financing, Skybus plans to keep expanding.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.