Missoula, Do You Want Direct Daily Air Service To California?, 5/20, Missoula

It’s possible… there’s a community effort to make it happen….and your help can make a difference?

Join us and find out how.

You’ve probably read that these are tough times for the aviation industry! With fuel prices at historic highs and airline mergers and bankruptcies in the daily news, the news isn’t so rosy these days. Locally, we all felt the pain of seeing Frontier Airlines pull out of Missoula before they ever started. Just because the news is gloomy, however, it doesn’t mean we have to sit here and do nothing about it!

There’s a great option we think can help improve the air service environment at Missoula, and it’s called a Small Community Air Service Development (SCASD) Grant. The purpose of this grant is to assist communities in acquiring additional or enhanced air service and we think it’s a great fit for Missoula. In particular, we’re going to focus this grant on service to California. With eight of our top thirty actual markets within California, this is an obvious and gaping hole in our current service area. We want to change that! Therefore, we’re putting together an application for a SCASD grant for $500,000, and our intention is to bring daily California service to the Missoula community. We hope to have the grant application completed within the next 30 days. However, we can’t do it without your help!

To apply for this grant, we must prove that the Missoula community is a willing and active partner in the application. In fact, it requires a community match that is at least 10% of the total grant amount. A greater match, of course, shows even more community support. The grant states that these funds cannot come directly from the Airport, and must come from within the community. That’s where you come in. You can help us get there with your financial support and with your letters of support we can include in our application! You can find a sample letter that you can download on the Missoula Airport website at http://www.flymissoula.com, along with other information about this important grant.

So come help us celebrate the Missoula Airport and rally support for this grant. We’ll be at the Doubletree Inn on Tuesday, May 20th, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. We’ll give you an update on the state of the Airport and the aviation industry at that time and we’ll provide the refreshments. With your help, we are confident that we can be successful not only in securing this grant for our community, but in the end goal of bringing daily California service to the Airport, for now and into the future. If you are unable to attend and would like further information, please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

Cris Jensen, Director
Missoula International Airport

Barbara Neilan, Director
Missoula Convention & Visitors Bureau

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

3:00 to 4:00

Doubletree Hotel 100 Madison

More info: http://www.flymissoula.com

Barbara Neilan

Executive Director

Missoula Convention & Visitors Bureau

1121 East Broadway, Suite 103

Missoula, MT 59802

406.532.3250

http://www.missoulacvb.org