So stated a Casper City Councilman about extending an additional $400,000 to SkyWest Delta to anchor the flight to Salt Lake City from Casper for at least a while.
I'm glad they did. I don't know if it stinks, but losing the flight certainly would.
So stated a Casper City Councilman about extending an additional $400,000 to SkyWest Delta to anchor the flight to Salt Lake City from Casper for at least a while.
I'm glad they did. I don't know if it stinks, but losing the flight certainly would.
If SkyWest, the Delta provider, does not find that this makes the run more popular, it'll likely be cut, and air travel to Salt Lake will end.
A new Natrona County Advocacy Group, Fly Casper Alliance, is seeking $50,000 from the City of Casper to help secure the present Delta (Sky West) flight to Salt Lake City. The flight already receives subsidies from Natrona County, but this one time payment is hoped to help continue to secure the flight.
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I'm really not too certain what my view on this is. Overall, I suppose it's a good thing.
It used to have great connections. A businessman in Casper could take the red eye to Salt Lake and then catch the late flight back. That's no longer possible Frankly, depending upon what you're doing, it's nearly as easy to drive to Salt Lake now.
And perhaps that's cutting into their passenger list, along with COVID 19, although I'm told that flights have been full recently.
Anyhow, losing Delta would be a disaster. We'd be down to just United. Not only would that mean that there was no competition, it'd place us in a shaky position, maybe, as the overall viability of air travel starts to reduce once a carrier pulls out.
A couple of legislatures ago there was an effort to subsidize intrastate air travel, and I think it passed. While Wyomingites howl about "socialism", as we loosely and fairly inaccurately describe it, we're hugely okay with transportation being subsidized. We likely need to be, or it'll cut us off from the rest of everything more than we already are, and that has a certain domino effect.
I don't know what the overall solution to this problem is, assuming there is one, but whatever it is, subsidies appear likely to be part of it for the immediate future . . . and maybe there are some avenues open there we aren't pursuing and should be.