BEVERLY — Passengers can begin booking flights from Beverly Airport to Nantucket under a new air service scheduled to start on Oct. 1.
A one-way ticket will cost $390, or $780 for a roundtrip, and flights will be available on Mondays and Fridays at the start, according to Francesco Sabelli, the chief pilot for Skip Air, the company that will operate the service.
“I’m very excited about it,” said Sabelli, who lives in Salem. “We’ve definitely seen a demand in the business model to have local clients be served directly from their backyard.”
Charter service has been available for years at Beverly Airport, but this will mark the first time that people can book a seat on a regularly scheduled flight out of the airport.
Skip Air will start with a limited schedule. Flights will leave Beverly for Nantucket on Mondays at 7:30 a.m. and Fridays at 6:30 p.m. Flights from Nantucket to Beverly will be on Mondays at 9 a.m. and Fridays at 9 p.m.
Beverly Airport Manager Gloria Bouillon said passengers can arrive 20 minutes before their flight, park for free, and be in Nantucket in less than hour. The flight time is about 40 minutes.
“It’s hassle-free travel at its finest,” Bouillon said. “It’s almost like you have a private kind of corporate feel to it.”
Skip Air is a new name for a company, Harvard Air Taxi, that has been operating charter flights out of Beverly Airport for the last 10 years. The flights to Nantucket will be on a Piper Seneca twin-engine airplane. Four seats will be available per flight.
Sabelli said the company plans to add planes next year and increase the number of flights to Nantucket, and to add Martha’s Vineyard as a destination. The company will also continue to provide charter flights.
Sabelli said it could actually be cheaper for a family of four to charter a plane to Nantucket than to buy four seats on a scheduled flight. But he said the scheduled flights give people the option of buying a single seat. The service is intended to appeal to both business people and vacationers.
Sabelli said the $390 cost of a one-way tickets compares favorably to competitors. Prices on Cape Air, which provides service between Boston’s Logan Airport and Nantucket, lists one-way ticket prices ranging from $199 to $399. Sabelli said the costs of tickets on Skip Air should come down as the company adds more planes and flights.
“Our advantage is the fact that we’re very local and accessible,” he said.
Bouillon said Skip Air will pay the same fees as other operators at the airport, based on the landing weight of the aircraft.
“We’re not looking at this as a major revenue source,” she said. “For us it’s more of a community value. A lot of times people don’t really see the value of a general aviation airport unless they’re using it.”
Beverly Airport is owned by the city of Beverly and generates about $34 million in economic activity for the region, according to airport officials. About 300 people work in businesses based at the airport.
Scott Dullea, chairman of the Beverly Airport Commission, called the Beverly-to-Nantucket service “a really great opportunity.”
“We believe this service will appeal to people that have long been looking for a quick way to the islands without traffic and ferry delays,” he said.
Staff writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
