Couple grounds its plan for an SRQ-based airline

Longboat Key resident Steve Miller has been working for more than two years to bring a Sarasota-based airline to Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.

But last week Miller and his wife, Hannah, who have more than 60 years’ combined experience in the aviation business, announced they cannot get their project off the ground.

Miller said he met with officials from at least 75 local businesses and 30 financial institutions in the last 24 months to discuss a business plan called Sunrise Airlines of Sarasota.

The airline, Miller said, would be a boon for the local economy and get residents flying locally via competitive fares and direct flights.

“I haven’t met one person who said the business plan wouldn’t work or doesn’t make sense,” Miller said. “And everyone agreed there’s a need for an airline in this market.”

But the need isn’t enough, Miller said, if no one is interested in investing.

Miller proposed that an airline using Boeing 737-400 planes with a home base at SRQ that has 24 nonstop destinations in the U.S. and Canada could be up and running within 12 months.

In the first year of operation, the business model proposed the airline could handle eight nonstop flights with four aircraft; add eight additional flights and four more aircraft in the second year; and add eight more flights and three more aircraft in its third year of operation.

Miller said international flights and local flights in Florida would have followed.

Miller said financial institutions are “behind us verbally, but, without any capital help, we can’t move forward.”

The Millers moved in early 2012 to Longboat Key from Hong Kong. The only problem is the Millers arrived through Tampa International Airport and had no idea the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport even existed until they lived here for a couple of months.

Miller started a Hong Kong-based airline, called Dragonair, in the mid-1980s; it now owns 31 aircraft flying to 25 destinations within Asia. He also formed another airline based out of Hong Kong, called Oasis, in 2004; it ceased operations in 2008. He said thoughts of a Sarasota-based airline immediately popped into his head when he visited the local airport.

Miller, 73, said Sarasota residents and visitors “have endured inferior air connections for too long.”

Miller said the time is ripe because if more carriers come into SRQ and dilute the local market, “you can’t get a local airline off the ground.”

“I failed to convince people what a huge economic impact a home-based airline has in the community,” Miller said.

The business model stated that the airline could create 400 local jobs that would be a combination of flying, ground operations and office staff.

“I have never seen such an exciting proposition,” Miller said. “I can see it, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.”

Contact Kurt Schultheis at [email protected]