BANGOR – Bangor International Airport continues to be a destination for airlines to place regional jet service even though the national trend is to slow the market growth of the 50- to 70-seat rides, according to a national expert.

Michael Boyd, an airline industry consultant based in Evergreen, Colo., said Monday a glut of the smaller planes resulted from at least five years of prodding by smaller airports such as Bangor to replace jets with higher passenger volumes, which were withdrawn to save costs.

Bangor was among those airports scrambling to get any kind of service when Delta Air Lines flew out of town in March 1999. At the time, only planes carrying up to 40 people remained on the airport’s flight schedules. Airport staff then turned to Boyd to help save the airport.

Regional jets provided a solution to the problem – a solution many smaller airports in the same predicament embraced – and the planes filled the gates.

“If we didn’t have them, Bangor would have less air service,” said Boyd, who is in Bangor through this evening to speak to economic development groups and travel agents.

Now airlines are faced with too many regional jets and too many bigger aircraft, and they are starting to halt orders of both types of crafts, Boyd said. But that does not mean that Bangor will lose out on service.

Because of continual gains in passenger bookings and high marks for service standards, Bangor is being marketed – and being viewed by airlines – as a place to make money with little risk, Boyd said. Plus airlines are becoming convinced they can capture business travelers just as often as leisure ones, he said.

“Your problem here is you have a stable market, a growing market,” he said, noting that it was a good problem to have. “An airline can come here and service its market without having to worry about its yields being run into the ground.”

Last year, passenger bookings grew 26 percent over the previous year. So far this year, they are up 23 percent over the same five months last year, according to BIA officials. The national average is 0.06 percent.

“Somebody’s using the airport,” Boyd said.

The majority of passengers using BIA’s scheduled flights, approximately 60 percent, are traveling to Maine and not from it, said Boyd. The 40 percent leaving Maine are heading to Orlando, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and New York City. Other cities – whether flight originations or destinations – include Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, West Palm Beach, Fla., and Baltimore.

“The benefit of having an airport is having access to the world,” Boyd said.

The airport is stepping up its marketing efforts to secure more service business. The airport recently retained Boyd as a consultant to aid marketing efforts and service attraction.

The airport also advancing a campaign to call itself “BGR,” its three-letter international airport code, instead of “BIA.” Travel agencies and airlines are familiar with the airport code instead of the airport’s acronym, said Adrian Fox, managing director of BFT International, a Portland advertising firm under contract to the airport.

However, BIA does have its challenges, Boyd said. Delta is considering reducing its regional jet service by 25-30 planes nationally but hasn’t picked the locations. Attempts to secure service between Bangor and Chicago will be tough because of requests by the Federal Aviation Administration to reduce the number of flights flying in and out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Boyd said.

Consumers continue to demand lower-cost flights, but high gas prices and other factors are making Bangor’s rates competitive with airports in Portland and Manchester, N.H., Boyd said. A recent survey found that Portland’s rates are higher than Bangor’s ticket prices, he said.

The chance of getting a low-cost airline such as JetBlue, Southwest or Independence Air is slim, Boyd said. Too often, the discount airlines seek areas with high concentrations of travelers from which to draw. Southwest, for example, requires a minimum of 350,000 travelers a year. All the airlines flying in and out of BIA carry about 200,000 passengers annually.

“Why doesn’t the airport get one of those low-fare airlines?” Boyd said. “Because it’s not Houdini.”

Boyd speaks today to the Action Committee of 50, a group of Bangor business executives, at 7:30 a.m. at the Dyke Center for Family Business at Husson College in Bangor. He will attend a business-after-hours at the Sheraton Four Seasons at the airport.