By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- A Massena woman at the Wednesday Town Council meeting criticized Boutique Air for a lack of customer service.

The town last year approved contracting with Boutique Air as the air carrier at Massena International Airport, replacing Cape Air.

Margaret Demo said she contacted Boutique in April and May to ask for hard copies of their flight information, which they said they would send but never did.

“I’m not good with computers,” she said. “It sends a message they aren’t really listening”

She also said she isn’t happy that the air carrier has no physical presence in Massena beyond employees who are occasionally at the airport. Cape Air ran a downtown office.

Boutique offers a flights to and from Massena and Baltimore. Demo said her son took a flight from Baltimore to Massena and claimed Boutique had no physical presence at all at the airport there.

“There was no place to get a boarding pass or to ask anything. There was no one to help him. When it came time to board … he said ‘I have no boarding pass’ because there’s nobody there,” she said.

Demo said her son went to board the airplane without a boarding pass and the pilot took “a cursory look” at his flight itinerary “and said ‘close enough’” and let him on the plane.

Members of the Town Council said they have been receiving complaints about Boutique Air.

“I’ve been approached about no number to get at Boutique Air and a lack of people at the counter, at our airport,” Councilman Thomas Miller said.

“The biggest complaint I’ve heard is unresponsive to calls. They answer the phone. But they don’t seem to follow up,” Councilman Albert Nicola said.

“Your concerns concern me more than what I heard the other day about flights to Baltimore being booked for two months solid,” Town Supervisor Joseph Gray said. “I’ve heard a ton of very positive things, about the plane itself … they’re not perfect and they need to fix some things, it seems.”

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Baltimore flight. I thought they had things under control,” Councilman Steve O’Shaughnessy said.