Nonstop to Denver Improves Air Travel out of Salina Regional Airport
Tim Unruh
March 2020
An early morning flight beginning Thursday from Salina nonstop to Denver, marks another major improvement in air service for the airport of choice for north-central Kansas.
The United Airlines service, Flight 5147, flown by SkyWest Airlines, departs at 6:10 a.m. from Salina Regional Airport, taking passengers to Denver International — arriving at 6:50 a.m. mountain time, where they can connect to other flights or enjoy a Rocky Mountain weekend.
The difference is that this flight, and future ones, will no longer require stops in Hays, either coming or going.
Then over lunch hour, 12:35 p.m, Flight 5194 will depart nonstop to Chicago O’Hare Airport, landing at 2:39. A mid-afternoon arrival offers better connecting flights times or an afternoon exploring Chicago.
Together, the two hubs (Denver and Chicago) offer connections to 99 cities across the country and the world, said Gary Foss, managing partner of the ArkStar Group, air service consultant to Salina.
The new schedule helps to meld the two flights, allowing travelers the option of using both hubs for the same fare; providing the option of flying out through one and returning through another.
“The nonstop flight to the west (Denver) makes flying east easier, as a customer can fly out using the Chicago O’Hare departure and can return to Salina connecting from Denver without stopping in Hays,” Foss said.
Thursday’s other significant change signals the beginning of daily flights (7 days per week) to Denver and Chicago, eliminating a Saturday gap in the previous schedule.
The flying public is already responding to the changes as more than 43 passengers are booked to board the CRJ-200 regional jets Thursday. More than double that are booked on Friday and Saturday flights.
“The bookings are very strong under the new schedule,” Foss said, “and they’re increasing sharply. Bookings are up significantly every day of the week. That’s very encouraging.”
As projected months ago by ArkStar advisers, the market is responding.
“Advance bookings validate the fact that the schedule change will result in continued double passenger growth,” said Tim Rogers, executive director of the Salina Airport Authority.
“The new schedule enables Salina and area travelers to take full advantage of nonstop flights to Chicago and Denver to make connections for travel throughout the United States and beyond,” he said.
Adding to the time and driving distance advantage for folks in north-central Kansas are competitive air fares.
“There is little reason to drive to another airport,” Foss said. “Air fares from Salina are very competitive with those out of Wichita and Kansas City.”
As always, parking at the Salina Airport is free.
“So whether connecting to Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco or New York, Boston or Washington, D.C.,” Foss said, “Salina Regional Airport has the flight for you at affordable air fares.”
Did You Know?
Nonstop flights to and from Salina:
- Salina to Denver, daily: departs 6:10 a.m, arriving at 6:50 a.m. (mountain time).
- Denver to Salina, daily: departs 8:30 p.m. (mountain time) arriving at 10:55 p.m.
- Salina to Chicago, daily: departs 12:35 p.m., arriving 2:39 p.m.
- Chicago to Salina, daily: departs 10 a.m., arriving 12:05 p.m.
(all times are subject to change)
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Greetings!
Scott Hillegeist will be returning to SLN to fill the controller position left vacant earlier this month. Scott is a retired Navy controller from central Kansas. He left us last January for one of Midwest ATC’s middle east contracts. He will start on 3/9 and should be re-certified in the tower within a couple weeks.
The FAA issued a memo regarding UAS pilots communicating on ATC frequencies. In short, this method of communication is not authorized. Apparently, there are still instances of pilots asking or being required to respond to ATC instructions on these frequencies.
My son and I are scheduled to visit Advanced ATC in Valdosta, GA near the end of March (SLN-ORD-ATL). The school may become a pipeline for new controllers to help meet the staffing needs of FCTs, and he’s decided that’s what he wants to do! We currently have one of their graduates working here now, and a few others at different towers operated by Midwest ATC Service.
Happy Flying!
Jay Hatchett
Air Traffic Manager
Salina (SLN) FCT
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United Air Service Key to Salina Landing Brethren in Christ U.S. National, International Church Gathering
Tim Unruh
February 2020
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A can-do attitude, coupled with some opportunistic imagination, helped a church finalize a worldwide gathering in Salina, aimed at celebrating part of its rich heritage in north-central Kansas.
After some three years of preparation, the Brethren in Christ U.S. is set to celebrate its history with a national assembly and an international global retreat July 7 to 13 at the Tony’s Pizza Events Center.
“Having airline service is kind of what cinched the deal,” said Pastor Ron Bowell of Crossroads church, 1125 W. South in Salina, one of many Brethren in Christ U.S. churches in this area. Thousands exist around the globe.
Air service could have been procured for landing at Kansas City International Airport, he said, but driving three hours to the Salina area would have been difficult for the nearly 600 people who could attend the event this summer.
The selection process was sealed when Jo Ann McClure, convention sales manager for Visit Salina, the travel and tourism arm of the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce, made a game-changing suggestion.
The process began in 2017 when the Brethren in Christ U.S. national planners made a site visit to Salina, to decide the feasibility of staging the national assembly here.
The church’s early Kansas roots were put down in the Abilene area.
“We showed them the community for two days,” McClure said. “Three Brethren in Christ U.S. local churches got involved in a video to promote Salina as their 2020 destination for the national event.”
The preliminary plan was for the international global retreat to take place in Kansas City, she said, because international visitors were thought to be landing there.
Using her familiarity with United Airlines’ service directly to Salina from both Chicago and Denver, McClure spoke up.
“They didn’t realize that we have such a great branded air service that they could rely on, right here,” she said.
It saved some global workers the inconvenience of checking into a Kansas City hotel, “unpacking, then re-packing, driving to Salina and doing it all again,” McClure said. United air service completed the puzzle, she said.
McClure is serving as Brethren in Christ U.S.’s local contact for all arrangements, from meeting space to hotels, rental cars, anything that it takes to host such a large group.
“An event of this magnitude comes with many moving parts. To successfully land and host such a conference, everything needs to align,” said Sylvia Rice, Visit Salina director.
One aspect of this visit is a bus tour hosted by local Brethren in Christ U.S. leaders to visit some of the original churches and church communities in Dickinson County, Pastor Bowell said.
“Salina’s assets meet the needs of the planners and attendees – from direct air service to great venues and hospitality.” she said. “The role of Visit Salina is to use our resources to make that alignment happen. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years, but when we succeed, it’s a HUGE win for Salina.”
Salina passed the test to place the assembly and international global retreat here, he said, passing on praise from Bridget Nace, executive assistant for Brethren in Christ U.S. based in Mechanicsburg, Penn.
“Bridget said Salina has been great about making things happen,” Bowell said. “I’m happy about that.”
So is United Airlines.
“For one period this year, the world is coming to Salina, and that’s thanks to United,” said Jay Brame, the airline’s sales manager. “We’re very proud of that.”
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United Airlines Connects Salina to the World
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Improving Salina’s scheduled air service has intensified the relevance of this growing city, as evidenced by this summer’s Brethren in Christ U.S. General Assembly and International Global Retreat.
Streamlining travel into Salina from virtually anywhere in the world, is a big part of what made the event possible in the regional center of north-central Kansas.
And tweaking continues in Salina.
United will celebrate nonstop daily flights to Denver International Airport, starting March 5. That’s in addition to already offered nonstop flights to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
“Those in Salina can get to a multitude of destinations on a one-stop and two-stop basis,” said Jay Brame, of Kansas City, United Airlines sales manager.
“Starting in March folks in Salina or traveling to Salina can access not only to the east or the west,” he said, “but they can utilize both hubs.”
More than 600 flights leave Chicago a day, he said, and Denver has more than 500, he said, and that number should grow to more than 700 a day by 2025.
For example, flying out of Denver on United provides access to all four of the Hawaiian islands, Brame said, and the entire West Coast and Mexico “United is one of the largest airlines in the world,” he said. “It’s not just singularly United. You have access to all of our Star Line partners (among them Swiss Air and Air Canada).”
Connected to all of those options is Salina Regional Airport.
With new hotels opening or under construction, the massive downtown Salina revitalization and new businesses coming in, this small city is a destination, said Jo Ann McClure, conventional sales manager of Visit Salina.
The Brethren in Christ U.S. events shows this place in the nation’s middle, can handle the load.
“Bridging that global and national event in our community was a win for me,” she said.
“Opening that dialogue helped them make the decision to do it all here.”
United couldn’t be more pleased to accommodate the church’s travel needs, United’s Brame said.
“We’re pretty flattered that Salina is the best destination,” he said. “United prides itself on being able to solve problems. We want to be the solution for everybody’s travel needs as it relates to air.”
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Rich Brethren in Christ History has Global Reach
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Brethren in Christ Church started in Pennsylvania during the 1700s and didn’t get its start in Kansas until 1879.
Roughly 300 church members traveled by train into the Kansas plains, settling first in Dickinson County.
“They were sent by God to be fruitful and increase in number,” wrote Pastor Ron Bowell in a speech on the history of Brethren in Christ in Kansas.
“They leased a 10-car train and brought their farm equipment to Dickinson County,” he wrote. “Many of them homesteaded and spread out from Abilene.”
Brethren in Christ’s missionary movement started in Kansas near the turn of the 20th century.
“World missions really got its birth in Kansas,” Bowell said. “The first money (for missions) was given here at a general conference in 1898.”
These gatherings are now dubbed general assemblies, and the last one in Kansas occurred in 1951 on a campground near Manhattan. That conference closed just ahead of the infamous 1951 flood.
The assemblies have bounced back and forth from eastern to the western United States.
“It’s a great step to have the general assembly back here. It just shows that churches can grow anywhere and spread the gospel if we have the vision and determination to do it,” Bowell said.
Expansion was challenging early on.
“The prairie was not an easy place to live,” he wrote. “(Church members) were risk takers and true pioneers. They were church planters, perhaps the very first genuine BIC church planters. How do we know, because they started new churches.”
Within 20 years, there were 11 active Brethren in Christ churches and “extension Sunday Schools” in Kansas, according to minutes from the 1912, ’13 and ’14 Kansas Annual Joint Council.
Those included Abilene: Bethel north of Detroit; Belle Springs, west of Navarre; Eureka-Union Township west of Abilene; Fairview in Harvey County; Hebron in Clay County; Newborn five miles south of Abilene; Pleasant Hill in Brown County; Rosebank, south of Hope; Sand Springs, five miles west of Abilene, and Zion, six miles north of Abilene.
“Attendance at those 11 works averaged around 700, with Sunday School rolls showing 850 scholars and teachers in regular attendance,” Bowell wrote. “Brethren had almost tripled since coming to Kansas. Things were booming and the Brethren in Christ were on the move.”
Kansas BIC works were where world missions were born, and “it’s where women pioneered in ministry.”
Over the next seven-plus decades, however, those 11 churches/Sunday Schools dwindled to two — Zion and Abilene.
Pastor Bowell was farming in the area, playing in a rock band and abusing alcohol.
He was introduced to the church by his wife, Kerry.
“Through my wife’s influence, I met the Lord and was saved during Christmas of 1980.” said Bowell, now 72. “I started going to the church in Zion. The pastor there (Kevin Ryan) was a great guy. He discipled me and it wasn’t too long before I started feeling a call to preach. I seemed to come natural and I know now it was a gifting.”
Pursuing a program of study, he was called to serve as pastor at Zion, and 14 years later, Bowell said, “I felt a call to start a new church (Crossroads) in Salina. That’s how I got here.”
The Bowells raised three sons, adopted two daughters and today have 15 grandchildren.
Crossroads Church boasts a regular Sunday attendance of 200 to 225 in two-thirds of the building at 1125 W. South. In the rest, Crossroads has helped start three other BIC U.S. affiliated churches, and is currently home to Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program based on scripture.
Revolution, next door, has an average attendance of more than 400.
A former bowling alley on Broadway Boulevard, is being remodeled to house Revolution Church. An Hispanic BIC church, named Alieneto de Vida, which means “breath of life” in Spanish, Bowell said, has purchased a building on West Cloud Street.
Currently, BIC U.S. churches in the Salina area have nearly 1,000 in attendance, the pastor said.
Through “church plantings” in the north-central Kansas region, Brethren in Christ has grown back to 10 churches, he said, with four in the Abilene area, three in Salina, and one in Herington.
“We have more members overseas than we do here in the United States,” Pastor Bowell said.
Brethren in Christ has nearly 250 congregations in the United States and there are BIC churches in more than 23 countries around the world, with 123,000 members.
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Brethren in Christ churches in Dickinson County were linked to local businesses, among them the Shockey and Landes hardware store and Belle Springs Creamery.
As a boy, future U.S. President and World War II Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, worked at the creamery, said Pastor Ron Bowell, of Crossroads Church in Salina.
“Ike’s grandparents were Brethren in Christ members,” he said.
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Feature Facility
New to the Market!
Building 394
2941 Centennial Road
Located at the intersection of two arterial streets (Schilling & Centennial) at the Salina Airport Industrial Center, this office facility will be come available on June 1, 2020.
With nearly 4,000 SF of professional office space, Bldg. 394 includes
4 large private offices, a reception area and space for a large conference area or cubicles. Large windows offer ample daylight throughout the building.
Call the Salina Airport Authority today at 785-827-3914 to schedule a tour or email
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Come Celebrate Aviation at our State Capitol! You are cordially invited to Kansas Aviation Day on March 12 from 9:30 AM to 2:00 PM. Aviation Day showcases aviation businesses that contribute greatly to Kansas. Come network with legislators and aviation leaders across the state and stay for a free lunch. Also, KCAE will present awards to our 2020 scholarship recipients!
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Support the Kansas State University AAAE student chapter at Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers on Wednesday, March 25th from 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Be sure to tell the cashier you're part of this group. The KSU AAAE student chapter will receive a percentage of all sales from this event.
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On the Flightline at America's Fuel Stop
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Salina Airport Authority | www.salinaairport.com
3237 Arnold Avenue
Salina, Kansas 67401
785-827-3914
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reserved
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