by William Skink

It’s difficult to conceptualize the scale of winners and losers being selected right now as this pandemic is exploited by despicable opportunists, so let me use a local, personal example. Allegiant Airlines are winners, and my kids will be the ones losing out because of it.

While the fear of spiking cases and hospital staffing shortages are ramping up, the Missoula Current has this article about Allegiant starting non-stop routes between Missoula and Orange County. From the link:

Missoula landed it’s second nonstop flight into the Los Angeles basin on Tuesday when Allegiant Airlines announced new year-round service to John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

The flight brings to three the number of year-round, nonstop flights offered by Allegiant from Missoula International Airport, including Mesa, Arizona, and Las Vegas.

“We’ve been working on it with them for a couple weeks,” said Brian Ellestad, deputy director of Missoula International Airport. “They had additional slots out of Orange County and announced several new cities and we were one of them. It’s good news during unprecedented times.”

I don’t know, Brian, IS IT good news? Because where you see job security, I see a major contributing factor to my kids probably going back to 100% remote learning soon. But who cares about their deteriorating mental health when there’s money to be made flying Californians to Missoula.

I can’t imagine being a small business owner right now, taking hit after hit, while cheery news about increasing flights is merrily reported by our online gentrification cheerleader, the Missoula Current.