It was a day of decision for the folks who run the South Bend Regional Airport. The future of flight service between South Bend and Indianapolis was in their hands.

The service was started in November of last year, through a contract with Cape Air. Under the terms of that contract, the airport authority board is subsidizing the service to the tune of some $75,000 dollars a month.

On Thursday, board members had to determine if the experiment was a success or failure. In the end, they decided to give it more time.

“So far in the month of March we're running about 44 percent load factor,” said Airport Authority Director John Schalliol. “Our consultant feels we need to be at 75-percent load factor, with an average fair of about 76 or 78 bucks. We’re not there yet, but we’re trending upward.”

With a passenger load of 44 percent, the board was basically left to determine whether the planes were running half full, or half empty.

“You know if we were bumping along at 20 percent it would be a pretty easy decision. If we were at 70 percent, there would be no decision, the airline would say get out of the way, we want to run it ourselves,” said Schalliol. “We’re not at that point, but we’re headed in the right direction.”

As a result, the board is willing to subsidize the flights for an additional three or four months. “I’d like to get it through the summer,” Schalliol said, “I'd like to have advance bookings indicative of what we might see during football season before we finally say this isn’t going to work.”

While the airport authority is apparently willing to spend more time and money on the service, it’s also clear, there’s a limit to ‘how’ much more. “I think the board was pretty clear that this is probably it, as far as subsidy,” said Schalliol. “If things say as they are right now, we don’t get any better over the summer, then that probably will be the end.”

By the end of May, the airport authority will have spent about a half million dollars on subsidizing the service. Board members appear willing to spend about $250,000 more, to keep the flights going into August.

But the South Bend Regional Airport is only half the equation. The decision to continue the service is conditional. In the end, the Evansville airport would have to do the same, since it’s paying the other half of the subsidy for flights that go from South Bend, to Indianapolis, to Evansville, and back.

The Evansville board is scheduled to vote on Monday, March 24th.