SANTA MARIA - The McGuire family of San Luis Obispo County is flying out of Santa Maria Airport on their way to the East Coast for a two week vacation, lured by the free parking.
"We're going to be gone quite awhile, a couple of weeks", says Kelly McGuire, "it saves you a significant amount."
One of the only airports of its size in California to offer free parking, Santa Maria Airport administrators say it gives them a competitive edge in attracting passengers now that it has added service to include non-stop flights to Hawaii as well as Las Vegas and LAX.
"I think it's a pretty big draw", says Santa Maria Airport Director Chris Hastert, "when you have a low-cost carrier doing flights to Hawaii (Allegiant Air) that's helpful, but if our parking was expensive they would still consider driving up to San Jose or down to LAX too to make a flight."
Parking is a key source of revenue at San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara airports, accounting for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
"It is when you talk about some airports charging you 10-12 dollars a night for parking", Hastert says, "even with our parking, with a couple of hundred stalls, you can see how that would add up, but again we're a special district and we receive money from the taxpayers already so we consider that money they are paying as going into the airport to keep the free parking."
Santa Maria Airport administrators say they don't expect a change in the free parking policy, at least not anytime soon.
"I think the only time when we would begin to look at charging for parking is when we have an issue with the amount of parking that is available for our passengers", Hastert says.
For now, finding a parking space is not much of problem at the Santa Maria Airport and that's just fine with travelers we spoke with, including the McGuire family which plans to fly out of Santa Maria again perhaps on the new non-stop flight to Honolulu.
"If you offer free parking, that's an incentive", Kelly McGuire says, "because it takes off the price of the whole package, the whole trip."
Santa Maria Airport Director Chris Hastert says a top priority now is to secure air service to a major hub like Denver or Salt Lake City.
