Barring an unexpected development, the Cody airport will continue to offer service to Denver — and only Denver — over the next few winters.

United Airlines recently announced that, as long as the federal government continues subsidizing the service between October and May, it will keep operating two daily flights between Yellowstone Regional Airport and Denver International Airport throughout the year.

Travelers can catch daily flights to both Denver and Salt Lake City in the busy summer months. But when passenger numbers drop in the fall, winter and spring, the commercial airlines have generally refused to fly to Cody without taxpayer assistance.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Transportation is providing United $850,000 a year to fly between Cody and Denver from October to May. Delta/SkyWest stopped offering wintertime flights to Salt Lake City after losing out to United on the Essential Air Service program funding two years ago. SkyWest did not submit a proposal for the next contract, which will run from March 2020 to the spring of 2022.

United, meanwhile, is proposing to continue its wintertime service to Denver for a slightly smaller subsidy of $841,000 per year. Under the proposed schedule, flights would leave Cody for Denver at 5:30 a.m. and 1:10 p.m. each day, and depart Denver for Cody at 11:15 a.m. and 7 p.m.

“Because of [Denver’s] outstanding position as a hub with unparalleled connections and our belief that United can continue to grow the [Cody] market, we are able to slightly reduce our subsidy amount, despite the increasing cost of providing the service,” United’s Daniel Malinowski wrote to the Department of Transportation last month.

United expects to serve around 35,700 passengers between each October and May, with flights running about 75 percent full.

While the federal government is set to pay less for the service, figures submitted by United suggest passengers will need to pay more.

Under the current contract, United intended to charge an average of $113 per Cody-Denver (or Denver-Cody) ticket while receiving a $25.48 subsidy. However, for the coming winters, United expects to charge an average of $135 per ticket — a $22 increase — with a smaller $23.54 subsidy.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is seeking comments on United’s proposal through Oct. 16. However, with the airline submitting the only offer, the process is expected to be little more than a formality.

Park County commissioners endorsed United’s proposal in a letter last week, writing that the county has enjoyed “excellent service” from the airline over the past two years.

“The Essential Air Service Program helps support Wyoming’s commercial air travel,” commissioners added. “This allows us to do business outside of Wyoming, and especially to bring business and tourism to Wyoming.”

The Cody airport has been relying on the Essential Air Service funding for its winter air service since 2014.

Meanwhile, Cody-Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources Administrator Bucky Hall said he and other airport leaders are working to convince Delta/SkyWest to extend its Salt Lake/Cody service — without any subsidies.

“We’re trying to get them to at least come back [to Cody on] May 1 and ... really look at staying longer [in the fall],” he told commissioners last month. Hall said that this year, he was able to convince Delta to continue offering service to Salt Lake into October.

Local officials, including the City of Cody and Park County commissioners, have said they prefer service to Salt Lake through SkyWest, believing that service is more reliable. However, United won the last Essential Air Service contract after submitting a proposal that was $940,000 cheaper than SkyWest’s over the two-year period.

Hall said there were some problems with United’s service to Denver and performance in 2018, but — despite some disruptive weather in Denver — things improved this year.

Yellowstone Regional Airport got off to a slow start in 2019, then had its busiest summer ever. Thanks to record-setting traffic in June, July and August, the airport had 27,603 enplanements by the end of August to pull just slightly behind last year’s pace.

Between June and September, United and Delta offer daily service to Denver and Salt Lake without any government support.

However, it appears the nonprofit Cody-Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources (CYAIR) and the state government will have to pony up some cash for the weekly United connection with Chicago O’Hare that was offered this summer.

Hall said those 70-passenger Chicago flights averaged about 80 percent full and indicated that CYAIR and the Wyoming Department of Transportation will wind up paying United somewhere in the neighborhood of $67,000. He said that’s “way less” than what the entities would have had to pay if boardings had been low.