Continental to offer daily Durango-Houston flights

Continental to offer daily Durango-Houston flights

August 30, 2001

By Shane Benjamin
Durango Herald Staff Writer

Continental Airlines is coming to Durango.

Year-round, daily flights between Durango and Houston will begin Dec. 13.

The announcement was made Monday during a news conference at the Strater Hotel by Bob Kunkel, Durango Mountain Resort senior vice president, and Jon Weaver, Continental Express, senior director of system operations in Houston.

Under the deal reached between Continental Express and Destination Durango, one daily direct flight between Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and the Durango-La Plata County Airport will begin Dec. 13 and continue for at least one year, Kunkel said.

The starting cost for a round-trip ticket to Houston will be $378, said Scott Stewart, director of air transportation at Durango Mountain Resort.

The cost will fluctuate based on heavy travel seasons and special deals offered by the airline, he said.

In addition to the Continental Express service, American Eagle will fly two daily flights to Dallas-Fort Worth between Dec. 14 and March 31, and one flight between April 1 and Dec. 14.

"The expansion of the American service and the addition of the Continental Express service are mutually exclusive," said Kunkel in a news release.

"But together they are part of our overall tourism and economic-development plan to secure year-round direct air access from Durango’s top four regional markets of Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Denver."

The Houston area represents the second most important market for summer and winter tourism, he said.

Destination Durango, a community tourism-development and marketing group led by Durango Mountain Resort, has been working for about a year to secure the year-round flight to Houston, Kunkel said.

The route will be serviced by a 50-passenger Embraer ERJ-145 ExpressJet.

From Dec. 13 to April 6, it will depart from Durango at 11:40 a.m. and arrive in Houston at 2:59 p.m. The return flight departs Houston at 9:20 a.m. and arrives in Durango at 11:06 a.m. The trip is about 2 hours and 45 minutes.

From April 8 to December 2002, the flight will depart from Durango at 9 a.m. and arrive in Houston at 12:15 p.m. to avoid afternoon takeoffs, which are hard on some planes in higher elevations where the air is thin, said Weaver, from Continental Express.

Weaver said the nonstop flight between Durango and Houston will "provide the energy-producing region of northwest New Mexico and Southwest Colorado convenient access to the energy capital of the United States."

The flight will also benefit Houstonians by giving them air service to Durango Mountain Resort, and Durango will benefit from having access to more travel destinations.

As a regional air carrier to Continental Airlines, Continental Express offers more than 1,000 daily departures to 113 cities from its hubs in Cleveland, Houston and New York, according to a news release from Continental Express.

Continental Express serves more than 7.8 million customers annually.