The heaviest users of Missoula International Airport are hatching a plan to drive down the cost of flying out of and into Missoula, and Frontier Airlines figures prominently into the solutions.

“The thing that we don’t have in this community, and what some of our neighboring communities do have, is competition – particularly competition from a low-cost carrier,” said airport director Cris Jensen.

With that in mind, the Missoula Economic Partnership has assembled an ever-growing task force made up of representatives from local corporations and industries that rely on air travel to do business.

The plan is to offer something the airport, by federal regulation, cannot – a revenue guarantee that gives an airline like Denver-based Frontier a chance to try out the Missoula market without risk.

“There have been some major changes in the industry in the ways that communities go about attracting air service,” Jensen said. “Really what has changed is that the airlines are now asking communities to help share in the risk.

“Missoula, for the first time, is getting more aggressive and proposing to mitigate that risk.”