By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
The new year brings good news to Fly Hays passengers at the Hays Regional Airport, especially for business travelers.
Beginning Jan. 6, the new daily departure time to Denver will be 8:30 a.m., allowing for passengers to easily connect to flights in Denver. The evening flight arrival time in Hays will be 9:35 p.m.
"The early morning flight schedule is obviously the most important to people, allowing them to make those connections and cut down on travel time," says Jamie Salter, Hays Regional Airport director.
Salter says the prior lag times between flights have prevented some people from flying out of Hays because passengers have been unable to make connections — especially flying west — unless they were willing to spend significant down time or even overnight in Denver or somewhere else. The first inbound flight to Denver from Hays arrived at 12:30 p.m. MT.
"That is what we've heard from the public is most critical to flying out of Hays. ... As long as they keep costs reasonable, people are very willing to fly out of Hays and prefer that as opposed to driving somewhere else," Salter said.
According to a Dec. 10 news release from the city of Hays, United Airlines has discounted fares to Denver to encourage bookings. United has also eliminated all change fees, allowing passengers to reschedule travel dates if needed.
All flight schedules are set by SkyWest, which provides contracted air service for United Airlines.
An additional afternoon flight to Denver will depart Hays at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The full flight schedule can be viewed at FlyHays.com.
The United Express jet will overnight in Hays. There will no longer be any "tagged" flights with the Salina airport.
Salter expects boardings to increase significantly at the Hays airport as a result of the returning early morning flight.
"When we had a similar schedule, in 2019 we had our best year ever. We flew almost 15,000 people that year," she said.
Air travel decreased dramatically across the country in 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Along with an inconvenient flight schedule, Salter says there was a "double whammy" at the Hays airport.
In 2020 — through November — there were just 4,900 enplanements, according to Salter.
In 2019 — the record year for passenger boardings — there were 13,309 enplanements through November.
Salter, City Manager Toby Dougherty and the city's airline consultant, Gary Foss with ArkStar Group, met with SkyWest officials at their St. George, Utah headquarters in November.
"Gary put together the presentation pitching the idea of what we were thinking and what's critical to our traveling public.
"It's not just the Hays community. It's the surrounding communities as well," Salter said, "and what is the most important to them.
"They liked our idea and where we're going, so we worked with them to get what we have coming January 6th."