By OLIVIA SCHMIDT
Hays Post
Wednesday morning marked the first sendoff of the highly anticipated return of the early morning flight to Denver from Hays Regional Airport.
The Fill the Plane celebration took place at the airport at 6 a.m. The event was organized by Hays High School DECA students, who have put on several other Fly Hays events. Seniors Griffin Lowry and Daniel Lopez worked on the event as part of their DECA creative marketing project for Hays Regional Airport.
“The project is basically assessing a problem within our community and trying to figure out marketing strategies to help solve that. The problem with the Hays airport is not enough people are using it to fly, and we’re going to figure out what we need to do to help solve that,” Lowry said.
“We worked with Gail Kuehl, who’s been very on top of the project and trying to get a survey out to see what people need,” Lopez said. “People have been saying they want an earlier flight.”
Attendees enjoyed complimentary coffee, orange juice and breakfast courtesy of McDonald’s, as well as the opportunity to enter a raffle to win two free vouchers for round-trip tickets to Denver. The tickets were awarded to Calder Craig.
The high school students were among the first to arrive to set up the breakfast buffet.
“I got a call from Griffin this morning at 5 o’clock and I was like, ugh,” Lopez grimaced.
Several local businesses purchased tickets for employees in support of the reinstated 6:50 a.m. flight. These businesses included Hays Area Chamber of Commerce, city of Hays, Hays Convention and Visitors Bureau, Hays Med, Enersys, Eagle Communications, SkyWest, Ellis County Coalition for Economic Development, Walmart, McDonald’s and Golden Belt Bank.
Attendees included city officials, Ellis county commissioners and Fort Hays State University officials.
City Commissioner Henry Schwaller boarded the flight after thanking all the elected officials and community members for attending the celebration. Schwaller reinforced the importance of the community’s usage of the flight.
“We want to get over 10,000 boardings and, the last two months, we’ve had over 900 boardings each month,” he said.
He was joined by chamber Executive Director Tammy Wellbrock who echoed the importance of flying for the economy of Hays.
“We are so excited in the community of Hays to have a service like SkyWest United that is flying between Hays and Denver round-trip throughout the day, and they brought back our morning flight. That is because of all of you,” she said.
The audience followed with an enthusiastic applause.
The flight departed at approximately 7:10 a.m. about 20 minutes later than scheduled due to procedural deicing. The temperature in Hays at 7 a.m. was in the single digits.