Contour touches down at Santa Barbara with new services

Contour Airlines has landed at the Santa Barbara Airport and this week it begins service roundtrip at two highly requested locations, Oakland and Las Vegas.

The Oakland flight landed about 10:50 this morning to kick off the service.

On board Chief Executive Officer Matt Chaifetz joined the passengers on the 30 seat jet for the 45 minute flight. He poured champagne along the way.

At the gate he shook hands with the passengers as they walked through an arch of blue and white balloons to be met by city leaders and airport officials.

Each passenger received a gift bag, a Contour hat, lanyard and a donut with blue icing to match the company colors.

Cyndi Ashbrook was on board to see her Aunt in Santa Barbara. She said her last trip on another carrier “was many hundreds of dollars.” Compared to a car, this trip was very convenient out of the East Bay and ” normally driving down and it’s kind of a long drive.” Her introductory rate was $79.

Michael Mindel flew in to visit the Convivo restaurant in the Santa Barbara Inn where he is a partner. He usually takes a route that goes out of the way before he arrives in Santa Barbara. “This is a game changer. What we would typically do is we would fly to Burbank out of Oakland and take the train up which was a lovely way to travel but it took 6 hours . Here we were up and down in 45 minutes.”

One UC Santa Barbara employee said she could be at work from the airport in ten minutes with this kind of service.

Chaifetz said, ” people love the service, they love the extra leg room, they love the affordability, they love the fact we don’t nickel and dime for things like bags and charge for drinks, and snacks on board. Pets fly free on Contour.”

Later this week service begins to Las Vegas. It will be part of the Oakland link to Santa Barbara and the same plane will reload with passengers for Vegas and then make a roundtrip back.

“Book fast we’ve sold a lot of our inventory to Vegas flights . They operate every day of the week except Wednesday and Saturday,” said Chaifetz.

Contour is also looking at other connections in the future out of Santa Barbara.

This service comes after a busy last couple of months. Frontier Airlines resumed service to Denver in August followed by and Sun Country which started its service from Santa Barbara to Minneapolis-St. Paul.

For more information about the Santa Barbara Airport go to:https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/flysba/default.asp

For more information about Contour Airlines go to:https://contourairlines.com/en