A new private air service is now available at the Durango-La Plata County Airport.
Similar to a golf club, ASCENT is membership-based and operates mainly in 11 Western states, but members can book flights outside the region as well.
“We wanted to bring ASCENT to Durango because of the steady decline in commercial flights to a number of regional airports,” said CEO and founder Tom Filippini in an email.
Durango is also relatively close to major destinations like Phoenix and Los Angeles, which made it appealing to the club.
As the airlines have consolidated and started focusing on flying large planes between major cities, it has opened an opportunity for clubs like ASCENT, Filippini said.
The club started in July in Bozeman, Montana, and the model relies on local pilots and planes. They have provided some flights to Telluride already, and in the Southwest, the service has been popular with ranchers, Filippini said.
The club provides customer service and maintains the travel-planning applications from its headquarters in Denver, but it relies on a network of aircraft operators and privately owned planes. The aircraft operators are certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and these companies maintain the planes and employ the pilots. The planes themselves are privately owned by individuals.
“By having local pilots operate local planes, we can ensure the utmost safety and convenience, while dramatically reducing the cost of private aviation versus our nationally focused competitors,” Filippini said.
The club is also not affected by the nationwide pilot shortage because it is not subject to the same federal regulations that require pilots and co-pilots of commercial airplanes to have 1,500 hours of flight time.
Because it is a club, those interested in joining must be interviewed to make sure they will be responsible members. The charter-plane industry has been impacted by passengers damaging airplanes.
“There is a bar that we set. We know that our assets and our crew are going to be treated with the utmost respect,” Filippini said.
The club does not need a certain number of members to operate, however, more members result in greater cost savings for those members as it expands the options for ride sharing.
Members pay for each flight they book, Filippini said.
To join the club, there are member fees. ASCENT charges a one-time initiation fee of $14,500, then $9,500 every year following.
For those that join before Nov. 30, the initiation fee is $9,500 and the annual fee will be $7,500 for the next two years.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
