Andrea Vernot combined her passion for food, talent for marketing and love of off-the-beaten track airports to create “Air Fare America,” a television program scheduled to launch in 2013. Vernot’s idea is to poke around the perimeters of the nation’s small airports to discover such local culinary treasures as Sugar Buns Airport Café and Bakery at the Easton Municipal Airport, which serves 17 varieties of eggs Benedict. Or the 250-seat, fine dining restaurant Nick’s Airport Inn at Hagerstown Regional Airport, owned for half a century by three 
generations of the Giannaris family. Vernot, a former marketing executive for Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development, and graduate of Atholton High School (her parents still live in Howard County), has teamed up with a Washington, D.C.-based production firm, Interface Media Group (IMG), to search out the lesser known but often amazing restaurants tucked into some of the country’s 5,000 general aviation airports. Vernot’s passion sold the idea to IMG, says its Emmy Award-winning Executive Producer Joel Westbrook. He believes the show will find its audience among lovers of food and travel – as well as the “pickers” – industry speak for programs like “Antiques Roadshow” that highlight hidden treasures.
For information, airfareamerica.net.
