They may not have been able to swim in its waters, but thousands of miles away from Fort Lauderdale Beach, Capital District residents could wiggle their toes in its white sand.
Of course, instead of sitting in lounge chairs, drinking Pina Coladas, these residents sat in airport chairs waiting for their planes.
Nonetheless, airport-goers at the Albany International Airport got to experience what Fort Lauderdale Beach has to offer as part of a campaign by Southwest Airlines promoting a new flight from the Colonie airport to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The flight was launched Sunday, Nov. 2, according to Albany International Airport Authority Director of Public Affairs Doug Myers. It is the first time Southwest will be offering the non-stop flight from the airport, he said.
Southwest’s Fort Lauderdale-Albany service will provide upstate New York, Vermont and western Massachusetts travelers with convenient non-stop connections to southern Florida and the major cruise lines that operate year-round from the Port Everglades cruise terminals, said David Langdon, chairman of the Albany County Airport Authority.
The nearly three-hour flight will take passengers to another destination in Florida, along with the currently operating flights to Orlando, Tampa and Miami. According to Myers, flights to Florida are in high demand at the airport.
`One third of all the people who get on a plane in Albany every year end up in Florida,` said Myers. `So it’s in the area of over 400,000 people a year travel to Florida.`
The airport wanted to come up with a creative way to promote its new flight.
So, Myers informed airport authority board members that the airport would be importing actual sand from Fort Lauderdale Beach to be used in a display in the airport that would be 1 inch thick and about 30 square feet.
However, Myers said, he ran into a bit of trouble getting the sand from Fort Lauderdale.
`I called them up, and they said, ‘We have a beach erosion problem and we can’t give you the sand,’` he said.
Myers had already told the media about the display and promised passengers that they would be able to feel real sand from Fort Lauderdale Beach. In a bind to get Fort Lauderdale sand, Myers called City of Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle and struck a deal.
`We sent some sand up to Albany on the promise that it would be returned,` said Naugle.
Naugle said that while there is a beach erosion problem in the county, for every beach that erodes there is another beach that gains more sand.
Fortunately, he said, Fort Lauderdale Beach had some sand to spare.
So, the sand was shipped to the airport and borrowed by Myers for a display that highlighted the airline and included a large-scale photo of the beach.
The display was up for 10 days, allowing everyone who passed it to get a feel for Fort Lauderdale beach.
Now that the display has been taken down, the sand has been packed up to be shipped back to the beach it came from.
`I hope they’re not going to weigh it, because some of it did spill out from the display,` said Myers. `We may be a pound short, but we will replace that with sand, if we have to, from the Million Dollar Beach in Lake George.`
Naugle said jokingly that he will be looking for every grain of sand to be returned, and that he plans to personally dump the sand back on the beach himself.
While Myers did not know what type of sales the display has generated, he is confident the flight to Fort Lauderdale will do well, as is Naugle, who is excited for Albany residents to experience the whole picture.“