New Flights are Up, Up and Away at Santa Barbara Airport

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) Santa Barbara Airport held a launch party on Monday to welcome passengers on a new nonstop service to Chicago.

In the past it was offered seasonally.

"United Airlines welcomed back their nonstop service to Chicago O'Hare today from Santa Barbara Airport, so they are offering the service daily for our community," said SBA Marketing Supervisor Lauren Gonzales," "Everyone is so excited, it has been one of the most requested routes from our community over the last few years since they previously offered it seasonally, so bringing it back is a huge hit for our community."

Passengers, pleasantly surprised by the decorations, received some free swag including airplane-shaped cookies made by Three Cubs Cookies.

Airport staff, and community leaders and partners took part in the celebration.

Gonzales said locals and tourists will be able to enjoy the route at a competitive price, too.

Some Spring Break travelers said they saved time and money by flying out of SBA instead of LAX during the recent spike in fuel prices impacting transportation costs.

Noel Cohen of Santa Barbara considered Chicago a travel hub.

"We have friends and family who live there. It is a much easier hub to get to the whole East Coast and it really makes a lot of sense," said Cohen, and we are happy that Santa Barbara has a lot more direct flights, it makes it more convenient to travel out of here."

"It is not uncommon for tickets out of Santa Barbara to be very comparable to LAX or other airports down south, so we really recommend people checking out the prices here, so if you throw in the cost of gas, parking a vehicle down there, sometimes it is actually less expensive to fly out of Santa Barbara."

Another celebration is the works for another returning route.

"On April 22, Alaska Airlines is bringing back San Diego's service, twice a day, from the Santa Barbara Airport," said Gonzales, "It can be a 6 hour drive to San Diego, depending on the traffic, you can hop on a quick one hour flight from Santa Barbara, prices have been pretty reasonable for those flights as well."

So far it appears the ongoing government shutdown impacting Transportation Security Information workers has not hindered local operations.

"Our TSA officers were impacted just like any other airport, but we didn't see any change in operation because they were still showing up to work it is a really great group," said Gonzales.

Your News Channel will have more on the new flights taking off this Spring at SBA tonight on the news.