Having a commercial airline is key to the success of the Trenton-Mercer Airport, something that Frontier Airlines understands.
For more than a decade, the airlines have heard nothing but griping and moaning from their passengers, and for good reason.
Flights cancelled, leg room nonexistent, endless security lines, fares so high you had to ransom your firstborn - these were the woes that accompanied flyers on all destinations, both domestic and foreign.
But this week, the industry got some surprising good news - and so did the cities it serves, Trenton among them.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index, an economic indicator that has taken consumers' emotional temperature since 1994, reports a 4.3 percent jump in overall airline satisfaction.
The major airlines saw the most significant upticks, due largely to their reinvestment in amenities, such as free snacks, that had long gone the way of the horse and buggy.
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But Frontier Airlines, considerably smaller, was also looked upon favorably by travelers responding to the March survey. The airline saw a 14 percent surge in its ratings - a double-digit increase that must have landed sweetly on its executives' ears. It remains near the bottom of the list, though, with a score of 66 out of 100.
The news came as Frontier posted a milestone of its own, passing the one-million passenger mark at Trenton-Mercer Airport, despite offering fewer routes and less frequent flights compared with last year.
The commercial airline, the only one of its kind to fly out of the county-owned facility, has 21 fewer weekly flights than it did last summer, and recently announced it is cutting its service to Minneapolis-St. Paul and St. Augustine, Fla.
Daily flights to Atlanta, Detroit and Orlando will continue under the new schedule, which is good through Oct. 26.
Daniel Shurz, a senior vice president with Frontier, isn't worried that the curtailed routes will present an insurmountable problem, noting that the airline targets leisure and small-business travelers who have the flexibility to change their travel days to save dollars on airfare.
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Visiting the local airport earlier this spring, Shurz suggested that destinations could be added if Frontier continues to benefit from lower non-fuel costs.
That would be a boon for local travelers, especially as the county polishes its master plan in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office, with hopes of moving ahead on a new terminal once the plan is complete.
Shurz, for one, thinks the four-year-old marriage between his airline and the Trenton-Mercer Airport is healthy and thriving.
"It was strange to us in 2012 to find an airport in such a densely populated area ... with no commercial service," he says. "There are a lot of airlines that wouldn't fly from an airport like this ... but what we saw was a great opportunity."
Let's hope that optimism continues to hold when the next customer satisfaction survey comes out.