By Kalin Krohe, Panhandle Post
Southern Airway Express brought their new King Air 200 to the Chadron Airport on Dec. 21.
A handful of locals from the Chadron community took a "maiden voyage" to McCook to try out the new plane.
"Southern Airways has been serving Chadron to Denver since June of this year," Southern Airways Chief Commercial Officer Mark Cestari said. "We are very happy with the progress to date with the market. We have had, despite the COVID challenges this year, very good customer demand for our flights. We actually sell out quite a few flights. We have two flights a day, Monday through Friday, to Denver...and one each on Saturday and Sunday. The reason for yesterday's trip was that we have a brand new aircraft [King Air 200], three of them in the pipeline, that we'll be using on the route."
Cestari said Southern Airways is currently flying a Cessna Caravan out of Chadron. The plane holds nine people.
"We will be switching to a King Air 200...also a nine passenger," Cestari said. "The benefit of the King Air is that it is a little bit faster and it is a twin engine aircraft. One of the disadvantages of the King Air, which we have worked on, is the fact that the Caravan actually has a lot more luggage capacity. What we have done with the new airplane is put a special baggage compartment underneath the aircraft...so that we can accommodate golf clubs, skis and even bicycles."
Cestari said many local people throughout Chadron attended the flight to McCook.
"Basically the airport is run by the City of Chadron and we've gotten to know a lot of folks in town through the city manager [John Sutherland], city council, but also very active in the chamber, the Northwest Nebraska Tourism Bureau [Northwest Nebraska Development Corporation] and Chadron State College," Cestari said. " We had a variety of different folks who represent the different airport users, just to give them a little preview of the plane."
Cestari said Southern Airways has many benefits for customers.
"One of the benefits of Southern Airways is that we have partnership agreements with several major airlines including Alaska, American Airlines and also most importantly for you folks, United Airlines, which has a very big hub at Denver ", Cestari said. "Denver's now the third busiest airport in the country. You can buy a ticket on either, IFlySoutern.com or United.com, go through TSA at Chadron and your bags can be checked through to any United Airlines destination worldwide. It's one stop now from Chadron to the world and we hope that people will take advantage of this partnership. So, hopefully more folks will be using the hometown airport and Southern than ever before."