AERO group working to add direct flights

It’s the classic chicken and egg conundrum.

Airlines won’t commit new direct flights into Glacier Park International airport without a guarantee of passengers. But how do you get passengers without first having flights?

A new committee of Flathead Valley business and tourism leaders may have the answer.

Using the Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming as a successful case study, the Airline Enhancement and Expansion Outreach committee will seek to raise this year a “war chest” of private fund guarantees that will be used to attract new direct flights to the valley.

“Jackson has a $2 million war chest,” said Paul Johannsen, chairman the AERO committee, at a June 26 Whitefish Chamber of Commerce luncheon. “Their direct flights are phenomenal. Their business community came together.”

AERO was formed about 18 months ago as part of the Whitefish Chamber’s “Whitefish 2020” marketing plan. They’re tasked with selling the idea of fund guarantees to potential airlines.

Financial guarantees are sometimes used when an airline is reluctant to take on the risk of entering a new market. Private funds are raised and paid up front to supplement an airline’s investment if seats don’t sell as predicted. However, if the flight proves to be profitable, funds are returned to investors.

Fund guarantees aren’t a new idea. They’re used by both small and large communities that see economic benefits of adding new flights to their area.

Bozeman raised a $688,000 fund guarantee this winter to help attract a direct flight from Newark, N.J. Seventeen businesses or groups made pledges to the guarantee, including Big Sky Ski Resort and Moonlight Basin.

Johannsen says the committee will be out asking the Flathead business community this summer to contribute annual pledges, with the goal of raising $500,000 to $750,000.

“By fall we hope to have a fund big enough to go out and get flights,” Johannsen said. “We’ve got to have the money in hand first.”

AERO is currently working with the Sixel Consulting Group to conduct an economic impact study on the benefits of adding new flights to the valley. Based in Eugene, Ore., Sixel specializes in air service development.

The study should be completed by the end of summer.

“When AERO board members need a good story to tell, they can pull together the data and have a great story to help sell this,” Johannsen said.

Markets of interest that could be targeted include Los Angeles, Phoenix or a winter flight from Chicago.

Most airlines agree that flights to GPI in the summer are a “no brainer,” said Airport Director Cindi Martin. Winter flights are a more difficult sell, she said.

“We are a mountain community, but we behave like a beach community,” Martin said. “Our demand is in the summer.”

AERO will play a big role in attracting airlines by “softening the blow of the soft season,” Martin said.

United currently offers a direct flight from Chicago in the summer. They’re reportedly asking for a $250,000 guarantee to add weekend-only winter service.

At the luncheon, Montana Tourism Advisory Council chairwoman Rhonda Fitzgerald noted that the Montana Department of Tourism currently is dumping all of their marketing money into areas with existing direct flights such as Chicago and Minneapolis, not Phoenix or Los Angeles.

Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau director Jan Metzmaker says the affordability of marketing flights to the Flathead in those areas could be problematic without the support of the tourism department.

“To try to market in California is so expensive,” she said. “The same with Phoenix. If the [Department of Tourism] is there, we can slip in with them. It would be nice to work in concert with the state.”

Metzmaker notes that when Bozeman landed the Newark flight, then Gov. Brian Schweitzer showed up on the Late Show with David Letterman to talk about the flight.

“Sometimes they can do crazy guerilla marketing,” Metzmaker added.