Things are busy over at the Missoula International Airport with at least four air service routes starting up this month. According to Airport Deputy Director Brian Ellestad, a bunch of routes started today.

“American Airlines is entering the Missoula market,” Ellestad said. “We have a plane airborne right now from Dallas Fort Worth and Chicago. That will be a new service on American Airlines. This afternoon, United starts a nonstop summer seasonal Los Angeles service along with their normal San Francisco and Chicago service, which also restarts today.”

If you’re wondering why all of these routes started up this week, well, the airport administrators are kind of wondering the same thing too.

“We would love to space it out a little bit,” Ellestad said. “The airlines are arbitrary in their system. They usually take that first full week of June and start their seasonal service on a Thursday or however it falls every year. Earlier this month, we had Allegiant do Oakland and Los Angeles and Frontier did a Denver service. For the American service we got a water cannon salute.”

Water cannon salutes are pretty common in the airline world, Ellestad says firetrucks are wheeled out near the runway and arc the spray from their fire hoses, so new airplanes can taxi underneath.

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