MISSOULA – Missoula's Neptune Aviation is trying a different approach with a portion of its charter air service, deciding to market one of its planes to "memberships" for business class travelers.
Neptune is primarily known for its firefighting business, with planes that provide a key tool to fighting wild land forest fires across the country. But Neptune has also operated acharter business for some time now, with two planes.
One is a larger Falcon 50 jet, and the second a King Air B-100 turboprop. In the past, the company has chartered the planes with an "on demand" basis. But today they announced a newmarketing effort, using "memberships" for the King Air.
"For example, if you came up and want our King Air, it would cost you about $4,000 to go from here to Billings and back. So what we're doing is modifying that, in that we're looking at a program where in effect we sell memberships. And what that does, say for example you wanted to go to Billings once a month. You could actually buy a membership for $750 which gives you a round trip ticket to Billings for $750 a month," Neptune Aviation CEO Ron Hooper said.
Hooper says the company will market the new offering for the next few months, with an eye toward beginning to service by August 1st.
He says Neptune will look at demand for several regional destinations, such as Billings and Boise.