By NICK BUDD
Hays Post
Beginning in February, SkyWest’s scheduled flights to and from the Denver airport will change. The new times are due to the fact that SkyWest plans to move to an all-jet fleet by 2015, and the company is unable to change each plane on a one-for-one basis. Due to the decision, each city where a plane has an overnight stay now has to “double up” with another airport, where one city will get an overnight stay and and one city won’t.
SkyWest has been the commercial carrier at Hays Regional Airport since this summer. While there still will be 12 weekly flights to and from Denver International Airport, the times will change significantly in 2015.
Beginning in February, the first flight out of Hays will be at around 2 p.m. after it arrives from Denver at around 1:30 p.m. That flight will then arrive in Denver at around 2:20 p.m. MST. The plane will then depart from Denver at around 3:45 p.m. MST and arrive in Hays at around 6 p.m. CST for the final flight back to Denver, which will leave at around 6:30 p.m. CST.
“If you’re going out to the West Coast you can still get out and do something but if you’re flying east, either you’re going to get in really late or have to stay overnight,” City Manager Toby Dougherty said at last week’s Hays City Commission meeting.
The schedule will change again in March. After arriving in Hays at around 10:40 a.m., the first flight will load and depart at around 11 a.m. It will then depart Denver at around 3 p.m. and arrive in Hays at approximately 5 p.m. and leave Hays for a final time at around 6 p.m..
“This is the best SkyWest could offer us,” Dougherty said. “It was a financial decision for them, and they acknowledged that they anticipated higher numbers, and I explained the issues we had with (Great Lakes).
“When it came time to decide a pecking order … we we’re on the lower end of that pecking order,” he added.
Dougherty said the city will “continue to fight” for a better schedule, noting there is no timetable for when SkyWest will have an all-jet fleet.