Chattanooga Airport gets grant for direct flights to west coast

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — The Chattanooga airport has plans for a new direct flight destination in the near future after receiving a small community air service development grant.

Denver is the place they are hoping for, but they have their eyes on Houston as well.

President and CEO of the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, April Cameron said, “Earlier in the month, we received an award for a small community air service development grant. and with that award it provides us the opportunity to go out and recruit new service. the target would be Denver, Colorado. We feel like that would provide a new destination opportunity to get to the west coast.”

After receiving this grant, the Chattanooga airport is ready for the change and wants to make it as easy as possible for people to travel to the west coast.

Cameron stated, “We currently don’t have great connections to the west coast other than our Dallas connection. So, we feel like Denver will provide a new destination as well as a great connection to the west coast.”

The metropolitan cities with direct flights is a plus but another advantage is going to be the size of the planes that the Chattanooga airport can accommodate.

Cameron also added, “Our aircraft size are increasing, we are starting to see that as airlines take on new aircraft. There are smaller aircraft, there’s 76-seaters are becoming eligible to be used in other markets so that’s opening up an opportunity which is eliminating the 50-seaters out of our market and increasing those to 76-seat aircraft.”

There is not a timeline of when they could be accepted, but Cameron says they are hopeful they can put Chattanooga on the map.