2 new flight routes are coming to Eagle County airport this summer
Travelers will be able to fly to Chicago and Houston, in addition to Denver and Dallas, beginning June 7
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive
The Eagle County Regional Airport is doubling the number of destinations travelers can visit this summer. While the airport has seen direct flights to Denver and Dallas in previous summers, the summer of 2024 will bring two new locations: Chicago and Houston.
David Reid, director of aviation for the Eagle County Regional Airport, shared the news at Wednesday’s meeting for the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority.
The EGE Air Alliance board has been working with United Airlines, Reid said, and entered into a minimum revenue guarantee with the airline to test out the two new-to-summer routes. (In the winter, flights from the Eagle County Regional Airport currently go to 13 locations, including Chicago and Houston.)
A minimum revenue guarantee is a monetary subsidy offered by an airport to an airline to try out a new flight route. Minimum revenue guarantees are “standard practice,” Reid said, used by airports and airlines across the country.
“They’re designed to get the flights up and running, get their legs for maybe a year, maybe two, until the route can support itself, and then the MRG is supposed to go away,” Reid said. “So it’s not an ongoing subsidy, it’s just an initial help for the route,” he said.
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The money for the minimum revenue guarantees has already been earmarked in the transportation authority’s budget, a total of $800,000 for the year. The maximum amount that will be provided to United Airlines for the Chicago route this summer is $413,432, or about $7,900 per flight. The maximum amount that will be provided to United Airlines for the Houston route this summer is $287,423, or $6,500 per flight.
However, Reid said, “it’s not like you cut a check for that, and you just give it to the airline.”
Instead, the money is used to recoup specific financial losses, if there are losses, on these routes at the end of the season. If the routes do well, the airline will receive “very little payout,” Reid said.
The United Airlines flight direct to Chicago will run from June 7 through Sept. 1, with 26 total round trips throughout the summer. The plane will be a 737, seating approximately 125 to 130 passengers.
The United Airlines route that goes directly to Houston will operate from June 7 through Aug. 18, running 22 round trips. The plane will also be a 737.
Both the Chicago and the Houston flights will arrive on Friday and Saturday evenings and depart on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
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“The key to that, leaving in the morning in the summer is big for us, as the heat of the day and the altitude can affect performance of the engines, they may have to pull passengers or bags sometimes when it gets really hot,” Reid said.
Scheduling the departing flights to leave early in the morning “reduces that risk of performance issues,” Reid said.
United Airlines will also add an additional daily flight to Denver during the summer, increasing the total daily flights to Denver in the summer to four.
According to Reid, the new summer flights will be published online on Saturday, Feb. 17.
