News
Big Sky plans to pull flights in Wyoming
Big Sky Airlines plans to quit its money-losing routes between Casper, Gillette and Billings starting Aug. 1.
Associated Press Billings Gazette
Kim Champney, president of the Billings-based airline, said Big Sky has been losing $50,000 to $60,000 a month on the routes.
"We’re trying like everybody else in the airline industry to … break even," Champney said.
"We couldn’t justify staying there."
The routes were first offered last fall with help from $1 million in federal and local funding. Natrona County and Campbell County each contributed $250,000 – and the U.S. Department of Transportation $500,000 – to buy a 19-seat Fairchild Metro III plane to fly the routes.
The plane will now be grounded and its crew and other Big Sky personnel temporarily laid off. No decisions have been made about the plane’s future operations.
Big Sky must continue to lease the aircraft from the Natrona County airport but will be charged $14,000 a month instead of $1 per month, according to airport Manager Dan Mann.
Champney said Big Sky will honor the agreement and pay the higher fee.
Champney and Mann both said Friday that Big Sky faced fierce competition with United Express, which is expected to resume flights between Denver and Casper today. United Express stopped flying the route in April 2000.
Gillette and Casper airport officials were hopeful Big Sky’s connections with Northwest and America West airlines would result in new flying opportunities for their communities.
But booking flights through Casper and Gillette proved challenging because travel agents’ computers would not show the availability of the Big Sky flights.
"Sometimes it would show you could not fly Northwest Airlines into Casper," Mann said. "They didn’t know to ask about Big Sky, so they would miss that inbound traffic."
Don Siemens, vice president of World Wide Travel, said he saw the problem firsthand and brought it to the attention of Big Sky. But the problem was never resolved, he said.
"Flying from the East Coast – say, Washington, D.C., coming into Casper – you’d pull up availability and ask for Northwest and it actually wouldn’t show Northwest," Siemens said.
"We proved that to them, so then those folks don’t have a clue and they’d route them through Denver or Salt Lake City.
"It was also true of the West Coast, with America West," he said. America West also has a code-sharing agreement allowing it to link flights with Big Sky.
"It didn’t even tell us there was service into Casper if it was America West."
He expects Big Sky to tell his travel agency by Monday what to tell customers who have booked flights in advance on Big Sky.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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