For the first time in five years, the Cody airport will be served by a weekly flight from Chicago through the summer season. Between mid-May and mid-September, an E175 jet from Chicago O’Hare will land at Yellowstone Regional Airport on Friday evenings and return to the Windy City on Saturday mornings. That’s in addition to multiple daily flights to and from Denver.

“We’re excited about this opportunity,” airport director Aaron Buck said at a meeting last week, “and we believe it’ll add a lot of benefit for Cody and for the tourism and the industry here.”

Getting the 18 flights from Chicago took some doing.

To entice United Airlines to fly the route, a private organization that supports the airport, Cody Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources (CYAIR), signed a deal guaranteeing that the airline will make at least $191,798.

Of that “minimum revenue guarantee,” about three-quarters of the funding is coming from taxpayers: $76,719 has been committed by the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s Aeronautics Commission, with another $50,000 from the Park County Travel Council and $15,000 from funds previously provided by the Park County Commission and City of Cody.

Buck said this month that a couple Cody businesses have also provided donations and Forward Cody provided a loan as contributions continue to come in.

“There’s a lot of entities that are just doing what it takes to kind of make this thing come together,” CYAIR Chair Dusty Spomer told the Tribune on Wednesday. 

The new flights are projected to bring over 1,000 additional passengers to Cody this summer, generating an additional $378,000 worth of visitor spending. Aeronautics staff considered the seasonal Chicago service to be a “good use” of state funds and the commission unanimously approved the 40% share of the minimum revenue guarantee at its March 17 meeting.

Exactly how much CYAIR will pay to United hinges on how well the Cody-Chicago flights sell. If they fill up and United earns more money from ticket sales, CYAIR will owe less and money could be returned to the state; the $191,798 is the maximum that United would be paid.

Buck said airport officials are confident the flights can succeed. He told the aeronautics commission that they already have a “good number” of advance bookings.

“We’re looking forward to getting that thing filled up,” Spomer said Wednesday.

Working toward a second hub

While excited to have weekly Chicago service, Buck has been clear that the ultimate goal is to have the Yellowstone Regional Airport served by two major hubs on a daily basis. Denver International Airport has been Cody’s only commercial connection since 2021.

At a Park County Travel Council meeting last week, Buck said it would be great to get a flight to Atlanta, Seattle or Dallas, but that reestablishing a connection to Salt Lake International Airport is the most likely — and the hub most requested by local residents and businesses. He said Salt Lake opens up the opportunity for quicker trips out west, and council members noted it also has a reputation for being a more reliable stop than Denver.

Delta Air Lines and its partner SkyWest Airlines ended their Salt Lake-Cody service following the summer of 2021; Buck said that was largely a result of Delta phasing out their all-economy CRJ-200 aircraft in favor of upgraded CRJ-550s, which have been in limited supply.

SkyWest has since been adding more CRJ-550s to its fleet, Buck said, and Spomer said in December that the possibility of Salt Lake-Cody service was looking “very positive for 2027.”

However, Buck cautioned at last week’s travel council meeting that getting just a seasonal daily flight to the Utah capital would likely require a revenue guarantee in the range of $700,000 to $1 million.

“We’re just kind of in line of when they have enough 550s and when the price gets to where we’ve been able to stomach [it],” Buck said, adding that they’d need more financial support from the community.

Using Chicago to get Salt Lake

This summer, Buck is hoping the community will use the Chicago flight, which will have first class seats, priority business and dual class economy.

“If we can get the community to do that and use that, it’ll show Delta that we actually have the community that wants those kinds of fares, and might be able to help be the straw that helps Delta come back,” Buck said at a January airport board meeting.

During the summer of 2021, the Chicago-Cody flights were generally full in May, June and July, then dropped off in September, Buck said. The airport is planning to do some marketing to prevent a dip this year, as the flights will start May 22 and continue through Sept. 19.

At last week’s aeronautics meeting, Commissioner Bruce McCormack of Cody made a point of praising Buck’s, Spomer’s and CYAIR’s efforts.

“Cody and CYAIR have really come a long way after a couple of hiccups there in the past,” McCormack said, adding that they have “really … put this program back on solid ground.”

In 2025, the airport logged 35,743 enplanements, or boardings, which was down by about 3.5% from 2024. However, the addition of the Chicago flight is expected to help boost air traffic this year — along with some newly engineered new flight paths that will enable planes to fly into the airport when cloud cover is lower.

January and February enplanements at Yellowstone Regional Airport were up about 5.5% from last year, which Buck described as a strong start.