City airport draws tourists, say two of them who stayed!

Kalispell City Airport: This airport is a gift that keeps on giving.

Back in July of 1990, we led a group of about 30 light aircraft down to Montana from Alberta on what we called the “Old Wild West Air Tour.” The last stop we made was at the Kalispell City Airport. We were able to tie down right behind the Aero Inn where we rented rooms for our stay. Let me tell you, there are not many airports anywhere that you can do that.

Strand Aviation opened up their hangar for visiting and had a barbecue for us. We stayed several days and had tour buses take us to the park as well as to Bigfork for supper and a play. Some rented cars and went shopping in the area, while others just walked downtown to go shopping. The businesses at the City Airport bent over backwards to make our visit very enjoyable. So much so that we brought several more groups of light planes back in the following years. Other flying groups such as the Cessna 170 and the Meyers aircraft groups, to name a few, have done the same.

The City Airport is unique in that you have all the services right on the field. Since our 1990 tour, many more have been added, including the new Hilton hotel. Since the 1990 tour, we have flown back many times and each time we spend a lot of our Canadian money in your community. In fact, we have enjoyed your area and great citizens so much that we bought a place here and spend a lot of time and money in your great community now.

If it hadn’t been for being able to fly into the City Airport that first time in 1990, we would have never known all your city had to offer and would have never spent all the time and money in your city.

As a side note, we were not the only ones from our tour to end up buying a place down here, as several others have done the same. Without your great City Airport, this would never have happened. Please don’t close such a great asset. A lot of places would give anything to have what you have in the City Airport. As a user of this airport, we support the upgrades, but we do not want the airport closed or moved.

The Goodwins are residents of Bigfork.