– Jessica Marston<\/p>\n
***This is Part 1 of a three-part series that looks at the impact that loss of airline service into and out of Hays has had on various departments and groups at Fort Hays State University. Part 1 (below) looks at the impact on the Athletic Department and its recruiting efforts. Part 2<\/a> looks at the impact on international students who are dealing with canceled flights. Part 3<\/a> looks at the impact on searches to fill faculty vacancies. All of the writers are enrolled in Comm 240 News Reporting.***<\/p>\n The termination of Great Lakes Airlines\u2019 service in Hays has affected Fort Hays State University athletic teams as they recruit for the 2014-2015 season.<\/p>\n The Essential Air Service Contract for the City of Hays had a contract date ending April 30. Due to the change in carriers later this year, the Department of Transportation offered Great Lakes an extension of service until July 1 when Sky West initially was scheduled to take over.<\/p>\n \u201cGreat Lakes not only declined the extension of service,\u201d said I.D. Creech, director of public works for the city of Hays, \u201cthey terminated current service early \u2013 March 31.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to the termination, flyers from Hays Regional Airport were seeing an increase in the number of late and canceled flights.<\/p>\n \u201cPassengers were often delayed overnight in Denver for return flights to Hays,\u201d Creech said. \u201cThe late flights caused havoc with connections to other airlines and flights at the Denver hub.\u201d<\/p>\n Creech said at its worst 50 percent of the flights out of Hays were canceled or delayed.<\/p>\n Sky West is scheduled to begin service as United Express beginning Aug. 1 with 12 flights to Denver per week. For the flights the airline will operate a CRJ 200 regional jet with a capacity of 50 passengers.<\/p>\n FHSU athletic teams have also been affected by Great Lakes Airlines\u2019 service termination in terms of their recruiting efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cRecruits now have to fly into Denver, Kansas City, or Wichita and a member of our coaching staff has to go pick them up,\u201d said Curtis Hammeke, FHSU director of athletics. \u201cIt increases some costs, but mostly it\u2019s taking time away from their time on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Hammeke, the change hasn\u2019t cut into the number of athletes the university is able to bring to campus.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it were a more long-term issue, it might,\u201d Hammeke said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a short time frame that it\u2019s hard to see the long-term financial costs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt might not be as significant financially as expected when you think about the added costs to fly them directly into Hays, as opposed to flying them into one of the major hubs and then paying for someone to go pick them up,\u201d Hammeke said.<\/p>\n Any financial costs are coming out of the Athletic Department\u2019s current year\u2019s budget, but Hammeke said he hopes it is only a temporary inconvenience.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest cost is in time,\u201d Hammeke said. \u201cPotential athletes are spending more time on the road and less time on campus. They have to spend three to five hours in a car each way, which then cuts into the time they can spend on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n The airline\u2019s pullout has not affected the spring sports teams\u2019 travel.<\/p>\n \u201cCurrently all the teams are bused to all season games,\u201d Hammeke said. \u201cThe NCAA pays the travel expenses of any post-season tournament games. For instance, the men\u2019s basketball team went to Minnesota to play in the NCAA Central Regional Tournament. The NCAA paid for a chartered plane to fly the team out to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Flight information for Air West can be found on their website<\/a>. Passengers can call 800-864-8331 or visit the united website<\/a>\u00a0to book flights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" – Jessica Marston ***This is Part 1 of a three-part series that looks at the impact that loss of airline service into and out of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,11],"tags":[185,1309,1306,1310,1280],"class_list":["post-6273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-area-news","category-news","tag-curtis-hammeke","tag-great-lakes-airlines","tag-hays-airport","tag-i-d-creech","tag-jessica-marston"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6273"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17623,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions\/17623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}