For SkyWest Airlines, the nation’s largest regional airline and the biggest player at the Colorado Springs Airport, the sky seems to be the limit.

The airline operates nearly half of all flights out of the Springs and last year paid the airport more than $1 million in landing and other fees — the highest amount paid by a carrier to the local airport.

The St. George, Utah-based company has 270 employees based here, 50 percent more than five years ago. It has more than four times the number of Springs-based employees as any other local carrier.

Recently SkyWest began building a nearly $20 million, 100,000-square-foot regional overnight maintenance facility on the northwest corner of airport land.

But despite its significant presence here, you’re not likely to see SkyWest aircraft at the gates. The company operates under the more familiar names of United Express and Delta Connection.

“Unless you live in St. George, Utah, you don’t know who we are,” said Steven Hart, vice president of marketing and development at SkyWest Inc. “We operate about 1,500 flights a day and are larger than America West, as far as flight count, but many people don’t realize they are on a SkyWest flight.”

SkyWest is a contractor for United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, carrying the big airlines’ passengers on shorter routes and in smaller jets, under the names United Express and Delta Connection. It operates 25 daily flights out of the Springs to Los Angeles, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Denver.

SkyWest’s local employees include 80 flight attendants, 103 pilots, 55 mechanics and 32 administrators.

It expects to add at least 10 percent more employees — maintenance workers and crew members — when the hangar, which is being built by Hensel Phelps Construction Co., is completed early next year.

HANGAR A SHOW OF COMMITMENT
The maintenance hangar will be one of 10 regional maintenance facilities the airline operates. It will have a new, state-of-the art computer system to create a paperless and more efficient maintenance operation.

Each airplane in SkyWest’s fleet must undergo overnight maintenance, which includes a several-hundred-point checklist, every five days.

In-depth maintenance checks that must happen every six weeks or so also will be done at the facility. Those checks include the engines and a number of operating systems.

The hangar, which will be visible from Powers Boulevard, will handle six of the airline’s 50- or 70-seat Canadair regional jets at one time, said Tom Himka, SkyWest maintenance manager.

SkyWest now rents a hangar that allows crews to work on only two planes at a time, and crews often must work on planes outside, Himka said.

Colorado Springs was “far and above the best choice” for the new maintenance facility because of the Springs’ proximity to Denver and because of the market here, Hart said.

“A hub (such as Denver International Airport) is not a good place to keep planes overnight,” he said. “And because of the size of Colorado Springs, it supports nonstop service to Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Denver. The efficiencies we gain by having a well-suited maintenance facility help lower our costs, which we pass along to the customers.”

SkyWest’s new maintenance hanger shows its commitment to the Springs airport and the entire community, said Mark Earle, aviation director for the airport.

“Once it makes a commitment here, for SkyWest and the carriers it services, it says that this is a place they are going to be for a while,” Earle said.

“The other side is the economic side. It is an investment by another company to create high-paying jobs in our community. In a sense, it’s a little more than just another one of the carriers that service Colorado Springs Airport. They are not only serving the economy, they are part of it.”

STELLAR REPUTATION
Colorado Springs resident Chuck Coggins takes SkyWest, flying as United Express, at least twice a month for his job at Honeywell.

“It’s wonderful. I’ve never had a problem,” Coggins said. “They are friendly every time. Their customer service is good everywhere I fly, which is why I always fly United if they fly to where I am going.”

Besides customer testimonials, the December issue of Forbes magazine rated SkyWest one of Forbes’ Platinum 400 companies, an exclusive list of the best big companies in America.

That’s one reason that Evergreen based aviation analyst Mike Boyd thinks SkyWest will survive in the competitive airline industry.

“That segment of the industry is going to have a tremendous shakeout. The airline industry has way too many 50-seating regional jets. The two slam-dunk survivors in that industry are Mesa and SkyWest,” Boyd said. “Delta and United don’t have to worry about flights that are operated by SkyWest because the job they do is so superior to other players in the industry.”

INDISPENSABLE PLAYER
SkyWest got its start in 1972 as a commuter airline ferrying business travelers between Salt Lake City and St. George, Utah. It now offers more than 1,500 flights a day out of major airports, such as San Francisco and Chicago, and smaller airports in places like Fargo, N.D., and Colorado Springs. It started service in the Springs in 1995.

The airline has grown strongly in an industry that has done a lot of retrenching.

- In 2002, SkyWest employed 5,079; by the end of September, the most recent figures available, it employed 9,570.

- It carried 8.4 million passengers in 2002; at September’s end, it carried 13 million.

- In 2002, the company posted profits of $86.9 million; by the end of September, it already showed profits of $73.6 million.

Its strong cash position allowed SkyWest Inc. to acquire Atlantic Southeast Airlines from Delta for $425 million in September.

But despite its growth, the long-term success of the company depends, in large part, on the financial stability of United and Delta.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, when major carriers such as United and Delta experienced sharp declines in passenger numbers, SkyWest too felt the effects of industry losses and had to renegotiate its contract with United.

Last month United emerged from more than three years of bankruptcy, but Delta now is reorganizing its finances under Chapter 11.

Still, SkyWest retains its relationship with Delta and United because it is dependent on the major carriers’ name recognition within the industry, Hart said.

And despite problems with United and Delta, SkyWest may have learned a lesson from another regional carrier, Independence Air.

Dulles, Va.-based Independence Air, which also had been a United Express carrier, filed for bankruptcy in November and shut down Jan. 5. That was about two years after it left the United Express program and tried to operate as a stand-alone discount carrier.

The major carriers, for their part, need the regionals to operate smaller flights so the big airlines can stay profitable and still serve the smaller markets.

“If we didn’t have United Express service, we might be able to fly a larger plane into smaller markets once a day. But, by having smaller planes at smaller markets, we are able to have several flights at different times of day, which allows us to reach several markets,” said Jeff Green, spokesman for United. “SkyWest, as a United Express carrier, helps us reach our goal and provide that service to customers.”