Plan to Bring New Airline to Missoula Could Lower Rates for Everyone

Local business leaders are attempting to lure a new airline to Missoula by offering a guaranteed profit margin. The airline in question is Frontier Airlines, which focuses on low priced no-frills air service. The final guaranteed offer is still to be determined, but if the deal works, Missoulians could be seeing substantially lower airfares in the near future. CEO of the Missoula Economic Partnership James Grunke expects the revenue guarantee to be somewhere between $350,000 to $500,000 over the course of a year, which will only need to be spent if Frontier cannot produce a profit on its own.

CEO of the Missoula Economic Partnership James Grunke discusses Missoula's airline needs:

Grunke says that "generally when Frontier Airlines enters a market you see a 20% reduction in fairs immediately." Grunke has strong regional data to make his point. Just this spring, a revenue guarantee was used to lure Frontier Airlines to Great Falls where rates on some routes have already dropped by 40 percent due to the increased competition.