The nonprofit fundraising arm for the airport in Cody wants to bring back Delta Airlines. Delta stopped flying to Cody in 2021 due to lower profit margins.
Dusty Spomer is with the nonprofit Cody Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources. Their main goal is to get the Delta connection to Salt Lake running again.
“Second to that, we’d like to explore potentially a second hub of United. That could be Houston, San Francisco, Chicago,” he said.
United Airlines is currently the only option at Yellowstone Regional Airport in Cody.
But Spomer said the airlines want to see a minimum revenue guarantee in case ticket sales aren’t high enough. The nonprofit estimates that could cost around $600,000. The actual amount paid out would depend on airline revenue from ticket sales.
Spomer said there’s a state grant that would cover just over half of the $600,000. So far, he estimates the nonprofit has raised more than $100,000.
The Park County Travel Council has allocated $100,000 of their budget toward the minimum revenue guarantee to try and attract another airline.
According to data provided by Aaron Buck, the director of Yellowstone Regional Airport, the number of people arriving in Cody’s airport is up this year in comparison to last year. Through Oct. 1, the airport has seen about 4,000 more deplanements.
But this year’s numbers are down from before the Covid 19 pandemic, when Delta was still serving Yellowstone Regional Airport. In 2018, about 1,000 more people had flown through Oct. 1, and in 2019 about 2,000 more people had flown in the same time period.
Buck said the airport hired a consultant to research how the airport in Cody could attract some of the people who might be flying into Bozeman or Billings, Montana, to visit Yellowstone’s East Entrance.