Letter to the Editor: Frequent travelers say they’d welcome return of Delta

Dear editor:  

It was with great enthusiasm that I read the article concerning Cody/Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources (CY AIR) trying to bring back Delta airlines to the Yellowstone Regional Airport in Cody.  I wanted to publicly voice my strong support of this endeavor.  

I am a fourth generation Wyomingite, with family scattered all around the Big Horn Basin area. I am a retired small business owner for 30 years, my wife works in the hospital district in Lovell and my daughter works in Basin.  We know how important it is to support our local small businesses around this area. We utilize local businesses (except insurance) for 90% of our needs including:  groceries, clothing, tools, hardware, car repairs, plants, and doctors for eyes, teeth, allergy, skin, and internal medicines, to name a few.  So just about everything we need, we can find locally right here in the Big Horn Basin.  We do not go to Billings for things; it’s not worth it to us to endure the stress of driving, the traffic, crowds of people, long lines and wasted time traveling. Frankly, Billings is overrated.  

Likewise, we have always supported the smaller Cody airport for our flying trips, but we are now being forced to fly out of Billings because of the extremely poor service we have gotten from United Airlines.  Let me be clear that the Cody airport staff members are fantastic and they are not the problem. It is United that is the problem. Nine of our last 10 flights have been absolute nightmares, total disasters, using United.  The United hub in Denver is total chaos. Flights are changing all the time, gates are changed three to five times, planes are changed, planes are boarded then you wait 40 minutes on the plane before take-off, then the plane takes off only to circle around and land again and you are told to get-off and wait; flights are regularly delayed for more than eight hours from their original scheduled times, your luggage is lost in the chaos, you have to cancel your business meetings for that day because the flights were delayed so long, etc.  This is a regular occurrence, not just occasional, and these occurrences happen with United not only in Denver, but in Utah, Kansas, Washington DC,  Virginia, to name a few of the places we have flown to and from using United.  

We never had these chaotic types of problems with Delta when Delta was flying out of Cody and Casper.  We have two sons who regularly fly for their businesses, and they prefer to fly Delta because of the reliability and professionalism of Delta airlines to get them to their important business meetings on time. 

To the county commissioners and people around the Big Horn Basin, please support bringing back Delta Airlines to Cody. We desperately need them.  Going to Billings is not more cost effective and is more stressful. We would much rather prefer to fly out of Cody again once Delta returns, plus we prefer to support our local small businesses anyway, and Cody airport is one of those local businesses. 

Best regards, 

Deon Zeitner

Otto