Skywest serves Fort Dodge as a United Express carrier, providing passengers with seamless connections to United Airlines flights to destinations all over the world through Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Using 30-seat aircraft would enable Skywest Charter to operate under less restrictive rules for charter airlines, but Steel insisted that his company would still use pilots with 1,500 hours of flying time and rely on Transportation Security Administration checkpoints to screen passengers. It would then fly those jets with two pilots in the cockpit, each of whom would have a minimum of 1,500 hours of flying time. Steel said the airline proposes to take 20 seats out of each jet, making them 30-seat aircraft.

Skywest, under the name Skywest Airlines, serves Fort Dodge and the other communities with CRJ 200 jets which seat 50 people. “We feel that it’s all just to mislead,” said Corey Keller, the public works director in Dodge City, Kansas, who oversees that city’s airport. Chambers said the supposed safety concerns raised by the union are not at all factual. “We know the Skywest Charter proposal provides an ideal opportunity to preserve Essential Air Service to our community,” Rhonda Chambers, the director of aviation at Fort Dodge Regional Airport, said Wednesday morning during a press conference held via Zoom that included multiple airport managers and Wade Steel, chief commercial officer of Skywest Charter.Ĭhambers said the plan has been “needlessly held in limbo.”Ĭhambers and other airport managers said the Air Line Pilots Association, a major pilots union, has objected to the plan, which has slowed down the review of it. Now, a group of airport managers has joined company executives to publicly push for action from the Department of Transportation.

However, that plan from Skywest Charter has been awaiting action by the U.S.

Airport jobs at mason city iowa