Airports square off over Max Air

It’s not a done deal.Mountain Air Express, the Western Pacific Airlines shuttle that had announced plans to serve both the Cheyenne and Fort Collins/Loveland airports, now is choosing between the two.
The discount airline was expected to begin shuttling passengers from both Northern Front Range cities to Colorado Springs this spring.
At least that’s what 200 business leaders thought they heard last October when Western Pacific officials made a pitch for investors at the Fort Collins Economic Development Corp. semiannual luncheon.
But things have changed.
“Right now we are deciding between Cheyenne and Fort Collins,” said Tom McClain, president and CEO of Mountain Air Express. Cheyenne, McClain said, really wants the shuttle service.
In October, Ed Beauvais, president and CEO of Western Pacific, announced the new shuttle service to 200 business and city officials at the FCEDC meeting. City and airport officials were shown through the new prop-jet Dornier 328 planes.
Each plane would seat 32 passengers in the same-sized seats as commercial jet liners. The planes cost $10 million each and can make the trip to the Springs in about 25 minutes.
Western Pacific started Mountain Air, known as Max Air, in December to provide shuttle service to the mountain ski areas. Then in the spring, when the ski areas slow down, Max Air would start shuttle service from several outlying cities, such as Fort Collins and Cheyenne, to connect passengers with Western Pacific, which flies from the Springs to 22 major cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, Houston and others.
The cost of the flights is relatively cheap, with round-trip fares ranging from $238 to $338 for off-peak days, which includes the shuttle.
Officials at Max Air said that the flight schedules and cities to receive service will be figured out in early February.
But it now appears that rather than providing service to both Fort Collins and Cheyenne as had been announced at the Fort Collins Economic Development luncheon, it will be one or the other.
“They [Cheyenne officials] have made two presentations for us, and I have not heard from Fort Collins yet,” McClain said. “This whole thing was dumped in my lap, and I have no idea what anyone told the people in Fort Collins. It was turned over to me to figure out the flights.”
McClain said he was scrambling to get all the ducks in a row to start shuttle service from some of the cities on his list, but no decisions on which cities would be chosen had been made by press time.
McClain, formerly with TWA, said that eventually all the cities on his list will receive shuttle service, but not right away.
“The first cities to have shuttle service will depend on the traffic analysis,” McClain said. “We have a list of cities we are considering, Jackson Hole, Santa Fe, Grand Junction, Fort Collins, Cheyenne, Rapid City and Casper. We will probably start up flights from three or four of those cities this spring.”
Fred Anderton, airport director for the Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport, is unruffled by the news that his airport may not be the first in line for shuttle service after all.
“Airlines don’t use calculators for these decisions, they use ouija boards,” he said. “Haven’t you ever bought a ticket and wondered how they arrived at the price? It doesn’t always make sense what they do.”
Anderton said he thinks the larger market share would be in Fort Collins-Loveland rather than Cheyenne.
“They (Max Air) can capture the market here, but they can’t capture it there,” he said. “It is not reasonable to think that people from here will travel to Cheyenne to catch that shuttle. I just can’t see how they would legitimately choose Cheyenne over the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport.”
Other city officials agree with Anderton. “It doesn’t surprise me that Cheyenne is anxious to have this shuttle service,” said Frank Bruno, assistant city manager of Fort Collins. “But they (Western Pacific) looked at Fort Collins-Loveland as a region and as a market. Last fall, they decided this market was ready, and we communicated that we were ready to negotiate a lease. I think that the people from Cheyenne will drive here to take the shuttle, but I don’t think it will work in reverse.”
Cheyenne has about 65,000 people and only about 18 percent of those who fly use the United Express shuttle service that flies to Denver International Airport.
More than 80 percent of those who fly from that area drive to one of the airports, mostly DIA.
“We have over 350,000 people in our market area,” Bruno said. “Fort Collins has about 105,000 in population.” Bruno said he was committed to making a negotiation with Max Air.
“Cheyenne is a wonderful community,” he added. “They may bristle at the fact that we have the market base, because of our large business community, but that is the reality. Our population base is growing, and our business base is growing. It would be very disappointing to the whole community if we did not get the shuttle service.”
In Cheyenne, airport and city officials are also anxiously waiting to see if they are one of the chosen cities.
“We’ve been visiting with Western Pacific for the last two years,” said Jerry Olson, airport manager at Cheyenne Municipal Airport.
“We’ve made two presentations to them in 1996. The last one was in November. We presented information about our market and our facility. We have heard that we were in the running with Fort Collins.”
Olson said Cheyenne lost the Continental Express service when Continental left DIA.
“So we lost 23,000 boardings here in a year,” he said. “There are 110,000 people a year driving to DIA. We have one of the most underserved markets in the country. Back when we had Continental Express, we had people coming here from Scotts Bluff, Wheatland, Laramie, Greeley, Fort Collins and Longmont. We had 16 flights a day two years ago. Now we have six flights a day to DIA. The prices are high, and you have to have good connections.”
Olson said he did not know when Max Air would make a decision about the shuttle service.
“These things are never done deals until the contracts are signed,” he said. “We have also courted Maverick Airways, which connects to Frontier at DIA, and we had conversations with Sky West. They would connect to Delta at Salt Lake. So we are talking to anyone and everyone. Over 90 percent of our people want to use our airport.”
Cheyenne has two runways, and Fort Collins-Loveland has one. Cheyenne does not have any small corporate jets based at the airport, whereas Fort Collins has hangars for Hewlett-Packard Co. and other businesses.
The Fort Collins airport has a taxiway connecting to a nearby industrial park with three corporate hangars housing jets.
As each city waits to hear the outcome, officials are remaining low-key.
“No one is in a panic over this,” Anderton said. “I have talked to the city and the people that I work with, and no one is in a panic because this type of thing goes on all the time.”ÿ