Winter flight season is ready for takeoff at the Eagle County Regional Airport

It’s about time for the Eagle County Regional Airport to get busy.

Winter-season flights began Sunday, with a United Airlines flight from Houston, but the real action starts Dec. 16, with American Airlines adding service from Dallas. Frontier Airlines will also add a flight from that destination, as well as additional service from Denver, joining United Airlines in providing service from that destination.

Denver and Dallas have year-round service from American and United, with additional service during the winter.

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Eagle County Aviation Director David Reid wrote in an email that in addition to the flights that come online on Dec. 16, most of the winter markets will start flying into Eagle starting Dec. 20 and 21. There are 12 cities coming into Eagle County this winter. Alaska Airlines will bring 76-passenger Embraer 175 “regional” jets from San Diego and Seattle.

The agreement with Alaska required a three-year minimum revenue guarantee, which requires the local destination to pay the airline if passenger numbers don’t meet minimum levels. Frontier is coming to the airport without those guarantees.

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In addition to Denver and Dallas, Frontier starting Dec. 21 will add once-weekly service from San Francisco.

In addition to the additional service, adding two “low-cost” carriers to the airport’s airline portfolio has also added price competition.

Chris Baddick owns Cooley Mesa Detailing, which services rental cars at the airport, and operates the Dollar and Thrifty car rental franchises. Baddick noted that before the addition of Alaska and Frontier, Eagle County had the second-highest average domestic ticket prices in the U.S., behind only Aspen. With the addition of Frontier and Alaska, Eagle County now has the 19th-highest domestic ticket prices in the country.

Baddick noted that competition makes Eagle County a much more attractive destination. The five car rental franchises already operating at the airport make Eagle County’s prices competitive with Denver, Baddick said, adding that he expects plenty of car availability for travelers flying into the local airport.

“People are taking advantage of rates with airline tickets,” Baddick said.

Baddick noted that while Hertz in 2022 added several electric vehicle chargers at the airport, there’s no demand for those vehicles these days. In fact, no electric vehicles are available for rent at the airport, he said. Instead, roughly 75% of the airport’s rental car fleet is made up of hybrids.

With additional passengers expected, there’s more interest at Gypsum Town Hall in trying to revive a plan to build an Interstate 70 interchange to serve the airport.

The Gypsum Town Council on Tuesday is expected to choose a consultant to perform a feasibility study on ways to modify an old design. That design, completed in 2010, fell short of finding funding.

But Gypsum Town Manager Jeremy Rietmann said the town’s engineers, both of whom formerly worked for the Colorado Department of Transportation, believe there’s a way to take a significant amount of cost out of the project, which might make funding it a more realistic prospect.

Until that happens, the passengers coming in will have to use the roads we have.