By AP/KWMU
Mascoutah, ILL. – New commercial air service at Mid-America Airport in the Metro-East got off to a bumpy start Tuesday. Great Plains Airlines delayed one flight three hours because of a technical problem and passengers on another flight from Chicago were given handwritten boarding passes because of a computer glitch.
The company's vice-president, Kelly Farrish, called it a "Murphy's Law" first day. But she says the airline remains optimistic.
Great Plains will offer daily roundtrip flights from MidAmerica to Chicago (Midway Airport), Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City
and Tulsa, Ok.
The $313 million airport opened in 1998 as an alternative to St. Louis Lambert Airport but has sat mostly idle. Pan Am Airlines has briefly offered air service.