During the spring and summer Destin, Fla., is a popular beach getaway destination for Memphians. And this week Vision Airlines began service between Tunica Airport – about an hour from Memphis – and the Florida beach city, where Vision has a hub. The Tunica-Destin flight will then connect to Baton Rouge, La., and Las Vegas.

Cliff Nash, director of the Tunica Airport, hopes the Vision service might be expanded to restore service to and from Atlanta that ended in early May when a yearlong contract with AirTran Airways ended and was not renewed. The contract was with Harrah’s, which had subsidized the service.

“When they were negotiating it, Harrah’s was not willing to underwrite it at 100 percent and they thought that the numbers that they had generated for the year spoke for themselves,” Nash said of Harrah’s. “They seemed rather surprised that AirTran did not want to keep the flight at anything less than a 100-percent guarantee.”

Nash sees Vision Airlines as an opening to a different group of travelers than those that are making connections on the larger air carriers at Memphis International Airport.

“We’re here mainly as a result of the gaming industry,” Nash said. “That’s what has created the need for the airport.”

The airport, operated by the Tunica Airport Commission and close to the county’s nine casinos, includes a new 10,500-square-foot terminal building that opened this past fall.

Don Shepley, board chairman of the Mississippi Airports Association and director of the Biloxi Gulfport International Airport, said Suwanee, Ga.-based Vision brings a different approach to regional air travel.

“It’s sort of a niche carrier – point to point – whereas a legacy carrier may not be interested in that type of market,” Shepley said. “The legacy carriers it seems are going more towards the business traveler. These other airlines have come in and worked these outlying markets and have found success in doing so.”

Shepley also said the economy and regional airlines that aim for leisure travel may be uniquely suited to regional airports like the Tunica Airport.

“Sometimes the smaller airports are able to negotiate fees easier than large hubs,” he said. “And also sometimes when you have a leisure market you are able to get subsidies.”

Vision’s service to Biloxi-Gulfport International, for example, is subsidized by MGM Mirage, Shepley said.

Memphis International Airport officials said they declined Vision’s offer of service here because Vision sought some concessions on airport fees. Vision then went to Tunica.

“We’re not trying to compete with Memphis for scheduled service,” Nash said. “What we hope to do here in Tunica is provide some alternative travel, something that is not in Memphis.

“I know they (Vision) are negotiating with some of the casinos here, which would then get us back to the Atlanta market. We’ve not been any party to any kind of negotiations or discussions. … But I do know that they are discussing it because the AirTran flights were full and there were a lot of people coming from Atlanta over here.”

The Tunica Airport is also home to Allegiant Airlines, a casino charter service with daily flights from various cities booked through Harrah’s Tunica.

Shepley said some economic pressures translate no matter what the market.

“Sometimes when they reduce the frequency, they bring in larger aircraft and sometimes they don’t,” he said. “So you’re seeing a stabilizing of numbers in Mississippi and a little bit of a decrease sometimes, but our load factors are going up.”

Regional airports are also feeling the seasonal nature of service especially when it is a handful of flights a week.

AirTran operates four daily flights between Atlanta and Memphis, whose airport leaders are adjusting to the more precipitous drops in winter season service for trans-Atlantic flights.

Delta Air Lines Inc., which has a hub at Memphis International, announced this week it will cut back its Memphis-Amsterdam nonstop service to four days a week starting in September.

The Labor Day holiday is when Delta has said it will carry out its reduction in capacity.