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The O. Zone: Locals get gouged again as ‘low-fare’ airlines target school breaks
I’ve lived in the Eagle River Valley since June of 1991 (minus one year in Washington, D.C. and one year in Seattle), and in that 32-year span I’ve flown out of and back into the Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE) near Gypsum exactly once.
And that was for a FAM trip to promote a flight to Minneapolis to check out the Mall of America (OK, it was actually geared more toward Minnesota skiers coming to Vail and Beaver Creek). In fact, our now booming local airport, which went through some tough times post-COVID, is clearly more about getting tourists to come here to recreate than it is about serving the locals, which is as it should be.
I’ll be honest, I stopped even checking for reasonably priced flights out of Eagle, because for many, many years, there really weren’t any.
According to the Vail Daily, Eagle County Aviation Director David Reid in late 2024 said that “Eagle County last year had the highest average domestic fare in the U.S. The addition of Alaska and Frontier — both classified as ‘low fare’ carriers [for 2025] — has already dropped the county airport to 19th on that list. And more locals are using the airport.”
That, coupled with a new $100 per-trip, fly-local rebate campaign, got me super-excited back in November to book a flight and finally fly out of EGE over the Eagle County Schools mid-winter break in February. Alaska Airline’s EGE to Seattle flight came at an ideal time given Southwest Airlines had scrubbed its Denver-to-Bellingham flight and United did the same to Everett.
When going to see my mom up in Birch Bay in far-northern Washington, I’ll do almost anything to avoid Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac) and the nightmare of Interstate 5 that makes Interstate 25 through Denver look like a blissfully uncrowded country road. I was equally excited to avoid the perennial parking lot that is Interstate 70 to Denver International Airport.
Then I started looking for tickets. During the mid-winter public school break from Feb. 22 to March 1, the direct EGE-to-SeaTac Alaska Airlines flight was $1,065 per person roundtrip, or $965 with an Eagle County resident local’s rebate of $100 per person.
A week earlier, which is the actual Presidents Day weekend but not when our local kids are out of school (something the school district does on purpose because we live in a ski town and have to work on holidays), the Alaska flight was $397 roundtrip per person, so $297 with the local’s discount, which is a reasonable price to avoid the uncertainty of the oftensideways-semi-shutdown I-70 crapshoot. But, again, that’s not when our kids are out of school.
I kept checking and circling back but for weeks that price never came down. By comparison, the United Airlines direct flight from Denver to Tokyo for that Feb. 22 to March 1 school-break window was $1,184 per person. We could go to Japan for a little more than Seattle!
So finally, in late November, I called aviation director Reid and mentioned the situation to him. It seemed to me, I told him, that Alaska was purposefully gouging the locals with school-aged children. He was not aware of the price discrepancy and told me to keep checking, adding that if locals want to see prices come down out of EGE, they need to support these flights.
I’ll be happy to. But I guess not until our last son is out of school and we’re no longer beholden to the local school schedule, when the airlines into and out of EGE that are supported by our tax dollars in the form of flight guaranteesdecide to jack up the prices.
Finally, in late December, with the price on that Seattle flight not coming down, we pulled the trigger on three tickets to fly roundtrip from Denver to Seattle on United for under $600 for all three of us for less than the cost of one ticket (with the rebate) out of EGE. Families need to plan, and lock in flights, and not wait till the last minute.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I checked on Feb. 8 and the price of the nonstop flight between EGE and SeaTac was only down to $701 roundtrip Feb. 22 to March 1 compared to the week before (the actual President’s week of Feb. 15-22) for $502. Still would have cost us nearly $2,000 to fly local, so we’ll roll the dice on driving to Denver on unreliable Interstate 70.
Even though I never fly in and out of it, I’m a big supporter of our local airport regardless of whether commercial flights can get jammed up at the drop of hat because Jeff Bezos wants to have sushi in Aspen, but if I can fly from Denver to Tokyo to ski Hakuba for the price of a ticket from Eagle to Seattle to see my mom and ski Whistler, sorry mom. I gotta say sayonara.
Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.
David O. Williams
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