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player ready...If Cheboygan, Charlevoix or Mackinac Island are in your summer travel plans, there’s a new option for getting there.
Launching July 1, Lakeshore Express airline will fly a handful of times a week from Midway Airport to Pellston Regional Airport, just below Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Contracting with Pentastar Aviation, which is largely known as a charter jet company, Lakeshore will fly a Saab 340b from Chicago with 30 seats (six have been removed for extra leg room) on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Return flights are Fridays, Sundays and Monday mornings.
The initial cost isn’t exactly cheap — $185 each way, or $370 round trip. From Chicago, you can get to any major city in the nation for that price.
But airline founder Greg Stallkamp is betting that the attractions are too much to ignore: free parking, a personalized flight and airport experience, no extra fees, a “three-minute check-in” at a private terminal, a free in-flight cocktail and, most important, shortening a seven-hour drive popular with families to a 45 minute flight.
Stallkamp, a self-described “serial entrepreneur,” said the price will probably settle in above $200 each way, but believes there will be a market. Demand has already forced up the price of the July 1 flight from Chicago and July 5 flight from Pellston to $300 each.
“We’re trying to make it as reasonable as possible for something no one else is doing,” Stallkamp said. “There has been demand for this for 10 to 15 years. I don’t know why no one has ever done it.”
For the sake of comparison, I priced a flight to Pellston in mid-July from O’Hare International Airport on Delta that cost $359 round trip — with a stop in Detroit. So Lakeshore Express seems to be in the ballpark. If you fly the airline, we’d love to hear about your experience in the comments section below.
Twitter @traveljosh