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Boutique Air Touches Down in Cortez

The City of Cortez heralded the arrival of Boutique Air at the municipal airport with a ribbon-cutting and festivities Wednesday.

In August, Boutique won its bid to provide Essential Air Service to the city, replacing the previous provider, Great Lakes. Service will include three daily flights to Denver and a single daily flight direct to Phoenix. On Wednesday, Mayor Karen Sheek told the crowd of about 80, which included a group of children from Kemper Elementary, that the city is fortunate to have Boutique. CEO Shawn Simpson said he launched the company in 2009 and for a time they were “an airline without an airplane”. He said today Boutique owns 18 aircraft and offers service to 25 cities. Simpson said the single-engine model that will be flying into Cortez, the Pilatus PC-12, is smaller than other planes that have serviced the Cortez airport under previous providers, but is better. He said the eight-passenger planes have seats that swivel and recline and are “like a little private jet.” The fact that the craft has just one engine has prompted some concerned comments from air travelers. But Simpson called the engine “the most reliable in the world” and said there has never been a fatality caused by the failure of such an engine.

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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