The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Locals supporting the local service thanks to pricing and reliability
By Mark Reaman
The air program out of the Gunnison-Crested Butte airport (GUC) is humming, in part due to local support. Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) air consultant Bill Tomcich reported to the board at the January 10 meeting that fall was a success and the planes are filling up with reservations for the rest of this ski season trending 17% up over last year.
“This past November had twice daily United service between GUC and Denver and it worked,” he said. “There was a 63% load factor (average number of seats filled per flight) which is very impressive for a quiet month. Given that, United has said we will see the same level of service for April and May. The community is supporting the service and making it work.”
Tomcich said December has been a “pretty good month,” especially for United but there were a few delays primarily because of bad weather in Dallas that impacted the American flights. “United from Denver is working like clockwork and the Houston flight had great early season load factors.”
Tomcich said United is starting direct flights between Chicago and GUC starting February 15. There will be seven roundtrips coming into GUC on Saturday and leaving Sunday morning.
“The inbound flights on Saturday are filling up and stands at about a 50% load factor,” he said. “The return flights on Sunday morning are really soft.”
Tourism and Prosperity Partnership (TAPP) executive director John Norton said they are advertising the flight and had hoped Vail Resorts (VR) would help with the advertising to make the flight a success. But he said Vail refused the request to help with marketing the Chicago flight. That led to an in-depth discussion on how to better partner with VR in general (see story in 1.17 issue).
“Overall, we’re pleased with what we see coming together on the air front this winter,” Norton said. He said TAPP had doubled the marketing spending in all the air markets around the country during the first weeks of January. “That is the time when the rest of the ski season comes together,” he told the board. “It is terrific that the Extremes are open and that will help. We’ll keep that pace of spending going through January and then back off to pre-season levels and then get ready for our summer focus toward the end of March.”
GUC Airport manager Rick Lamport said it has been a smooth start to the season. “It’s steady as she goes,” he said touting that the airport restaurant is doing well, especially when there are delays.
“Overall, the air program is doing great,” summarized Tomcich. “Credit some of that to better pricing and a better schedule to attract locals that were “leaking” to Montrose and Denver.”
RTA executive director Scott Truex noted that the added service provided more reliability and that in terms of ticket pricing, the premium out of GUC compared to Denver “is not that much anymore and in fact can sometimes be cheaper. That is definitely a factor.”
