Fly Great Lakes

Editor,

Recently, I had my first opportunity to fly Great Lakes Airlines out of McCook. I was a little pessimistic as I heard some rumblings but overall my experience was very positive. We were scheduled to leave McCook at 7 a.m., and did not depart until 8 but still made our connecting flight and arrived in San Diego at 9:20 a.m. Our return flight out of Denver was 30 minutes late but this certainly beat a 4 and a half hour drive home from Denver.

I decided to put some numbers to flying out of McCook as compared to driving to Denver. Our tickets were just a little over $200 each for round trip for a total of $400 extra to fly from McCook. Here is what I figure that our cost would have been to fly out of Denver:

Mileage- 257 miles each way x 2 times $.55 which is the IRS mileage for 2012 which comes to $282.70

Parking- 6 days at $11 per day is $66

Time- 2 people at $20 per hour for 9 hours round-trip each is $360. (Your hourly rate may be more or less)

So, our cost to fly out of McCook was a little over $400 and our cost to drive to Denver to fly out of DIA would be conservatively $708.70. Our savings was $308.70. I say conservatively because for us to catch an 8:30 a.m., flight out of DIA we would have had to leave the night before and add the cost of a motel room and at least 2 meals which could have been at least another $130.

I am asking you to check Great Lakes out next time you are scheduling your trip. We as a community need to support them to keep this valuable service.

Initially, it seemed that the cost to fly out of McCook was a lot until you actually figure what it really costs to drive to Denver and what was really nice was not having to make the 4 and a half hour drive home when we got to Denver. Off the plane and in 5 minutes we were home!

Al Gunther

McCook