What’s a 200-Inch Snowfall to This Guy?

Flying out was tough, but getting home was worse. In fact, it was so bad that Lois Goriesky and her husband ended up taking the bus.

Others tell similar stories of the hellish time they’ve had trying to fly into, or out of, Michigan’s isolated and snowy Upper Peninsula.

But Dick Fontaine said it really isn’t that awful.

“People only talk about the bad experiences,” he said. “They never talk about the good experiences.”

Fontaine is president of Great Lakes Aviation, which has carved out a successful business by taking over routes and offering government-subsidized, reduced fares in areas of the Upper Peninsula where other carriers said they couldn’t turn a profit.

In two years, the Spencer, Iowa-based airline has moved into Sault Ste. Marie, Marquette, Escanaba, Menominee, Iron Mountain and Ironwood. Great Lakes was also in Houghton until this fall, and Fontaine said it would return if the county airport built a hangar.

“There’s 300 inches of snow there a year,” he said. “We can’t leave a plane out overnight in that.”

The average annual snowfall is 200 inches in the Upper Peninsula, where 330,000 people are scattered across 16,538 square miles and are cut off by the Strait of Mackinac from the 11 million people who live in the rest of Michigan.

Travel to other parts of the country can be complicated.

When Goriesky and her husband left their Iron River home one day two years ago to visit Grand Junction, Colo., they had to drive 45 minutes to the airport in Iron Mountain.

Then their plane was delayed and they missed their connecting flight in Chicago. They arrived at their destination 17 hours after they left.

On the way back, they ran into a delay in Denver, missed the last flight of the day out of Chicago and had to take a bus home. When they arrived the next day, they learned their luggage was lost.

“Needless to say, I haven’t flown since,” Goriesky said.

Fontaine said his airline, with its fleet of 19-seat planes, is ending such nightmares.

Great Lakes carried 165,000 passengers in 1990 and expects to end 1991 with 255,000. About half that business is Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, although the percentage will shrink next year as Great Lakes extends into Western markets.

In expanding, Great Lakes has made a point of moving in behind Simmons Airlines, a company created by a Marquette businessman and bought out by American Eagle.

American Eagle made it plain two years ago that it wanted out of most of the Upper Peninsula. It routinely charged more than $200 for a ticket, and in the last days of its government-subsidized service to Sault Ste. Marie, it canceled so many flights that the U.S. Transportation Department felt compelled to remind the airline of its obligations.

A ticket on Great Lakes from Marquette or Escanaba to Chicago now costs less than $50.

Meanwhile, Great Lakes said the market was so strong in Ironwood and Iron Mountain that it asked the government this year to discontinue its federal subsidies. It still receives subsidies for two other areas.

“The cities in the Upper Peninsula are sufficiently isolated, you put in good service, they will travel,” Fontaine said.

Or, in some cases, they need to travel.

Goriesky, who is director of the Iron County Chamber of Commerce, said a company she was trying to lure to the area told her three months ago it had crossed Iron County off its list. The reason: no local air service.