Montana Modern: The New MSO

Big things are happening at the Missoula Montana Airport: the recent terminal expansion has given the airport an entirely new look, the runway was re-paved and airlines are offering more routes and destinations.

In the last year and a half, passenger traffic has broken records month after month. This week the commissioners sat down with Brian Ellestad, director of the airport, to discuss the details of running a busy regional airport.

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:10] Well, welcome back to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I am Dave Strohmaier and I'm here with my fellow commissioners and friends, Josh Slotnick and Juanita Vero, and we are delighted today to also be joined by a special guest, Brian Elstad, director of the Missoula, Montana airport. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Ellestad: [00:00:29] Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:32] Yeah. Thanks for being here, Brian. Of course. And I just want to jump in right from the start asking you about some of the changes. As anybody who's lived here for a little while even knows, man. Missoula. Our airport has transformed. So do you mind talking for a minute or two about those changes and how we got where we are?

Brian Ellestad: [00:00:48] And of course, I mean, obviously, several years ago we opened up phase one with the spring. We opened up phase two, which was four more gates. So basically doubling in size for this summer. We opened up here probably a month ago. Another kitchen, another coffee shop, another bar in the hold rooms. Really the idea was, you know, we love kettle House in the current airport terminal, but we wanted to highlight some other brands. So now there's, I think 16 more taps on on tap and.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:15] We're staying on brand.

Brian Ellestad: [00:01:17] Missoula needs their beer, so we're good.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:19] My throat is as dry as a rattlesnake right now. Let's head on out.

Brian Ellestad: [00:01:23] So yeah, we opened up that another coffee shop, this time probably serving Florence Coffee. So we got black coffee roasting and and now Florence. But a lot of stuff going on.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:33] Awesome. And what was the kitchen? You said a kitchen too.

Brian Ellestad: [00:01:35] So another kitchen. So. So our first kitchen, we almost all grew it right away. So more food choices. So flatbread pizzas are being pretty popular and some other stuff.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:45] So if I was to go out there right now, is there any construction still ongoing?

Brian Ellestad: [00:01:50] We do. So while we say we're done, we keep going. In the first phase, we worked out of a temporary baggage claim. In May, we opened up a permanent two carousel baggage claim. We don't know how we survived without that going into the summer, but our alternative at the time was to do much like the rental cars, make the customers go outside the building into a temporary facility. So we painfully did a temporary baggage claim, and now we're backfilling that with bathrooms. So that'll probably be done October November. But so the first floor will be bathroom galore. So way better than it was. I mean it's we lacked for several years with bathrooms.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:24] Now I drove by this summer. I can't remember when exactly it was. And I looked over at the airport and there were hardly any vehicles. And I'm thinking to myself, what the heck, this is the peak of tourist season. And then, uh, learned that there was some resurfacing going on at the airport. Tell us about that.

Brian Ellestad: [00:02:43] So, yeah, we, uh, worked with the community about a year ago, um, reached out to anybody that we could think of. And obviously the music scene, the universities, hotels, it kind of narrowed. And airlines, obviously, to kind of figure out when best to close down. So every 20 years we only a single runway air airport. So we had to take the hard decision to shut down. So for 127 hours, we did an $18 million project of putting down more payment to strengthen our our asphalt out on the main runway. That was just the runway.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:12] Do you know when in 20 years. Yeah. When? When in 2045. Will it be closed? Start planning accordingly.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:19] Yeah. So this actually affected me personally. Oh, yeah, I was I flew to Minnesota to go on a canoe trip, and I was just telling Brian, before you all arrived, I got to experience Bozeman Airport, which everything worked fine. But I did walk around that airport thinking ours is nicer.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:36] Ah, yes. Was there any question in your mind?

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:39] No, no, ours is nicer. And. And the baggage claim was kind of a mess. There you go. Ours is nicer.

Brian Ellestad: [00:03:46] Thank you, thank you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:47] Baggage claim. Yeah. And? And just nicer views. The flooring, the nicer.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:52] I mean, this is this is a an important part of. And you've intentionally done this with our airport. Can you talk about the those elements?

Brian Ellestad: [00:03:59] Well, you know, we worked with the architects, you know, 2019, I guess, or before that it would have been, uh, when I get here, 2010, that's probably kind of when the planning really started was shortly thereafter we went to multiple airports, got, you know, do we do a remodel, do we do a full everything? Um, ended up being almost cheaper to just to do the full the redo. You know, we wanted to make it more a little bit unique, but, you know, Missoula or Montana modern, however you want to call it was kind of where we kind of landed and hopefully that shows through. But yeah, we really wanted the local.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:31] Brands like what what? And you're like cruising around looking at airports. I think you said something about the tri cities or there, there's some. Yeah. What was wowing you back in 2010 where you're like, okay, this is the future.

Brian Ellestad: [00:04:43] The architects probably hated us because we were let them do their pretty stuff, but we wanted operational, so we wanted the customer experience so you could walk in and not have to follow signs everywhere. So okay, you can see the ticket counters. If you remember the old building, you could never see the Alaska Airlines ticket counter. You had no idea where it is. If you wanted to find the Alaska Airlines gate. You walked up a set of stairs, down a long hallway, found another random staircase to go downstairs, and if you're lucky, you made the hard right turn and made it to their hold room. So we wanted it to be a little not designed for. So you see the ticket counters? Oh, there's an escalator or an elevator. You must go upstairs. So there's TSA checkpoint. Just make it more user friendly. And, um, I hopefully we did that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:24] Yeah. Oh for sure. I feel like it's really useful.

Brian Ellestad: [00:05:25] And we wanted the local brands. So you know kettle House and.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:29] I like the, the exposed wood beams and all the glass and the light. And it really feels like the airport is honoring the place. And you get off a plane and you walk out and you're like, oh my gosh, look where I am. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:42] But you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:42] Know.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:42] You're here like, you know where you're supposed to go to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:45] It's very different than getting off a plane in most other major airports. You're like, I'm not sure where I am. I could be in fill in the name of the city here, you know, and that's not that's not the case with ours.

Brian Ellestad: [00:05:54] I'm glad you said we're nicer to Bozeman, because we did try and do some pranks on some of our first arriving customers, and we were watching the first one, man, I think a couple of us. Welcome to Bozeman. Just kidding.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:04] Oh, no.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:05] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:06] So it looks like real money's been spent. I mean, it's it's a beautiful, beautiful building. Do you mind talking for a bit about where that money came from?

Brian Ellestad: [00:06:14] We're self-funded, per se. So, you know, we don't have a local tax levy, so it's what we call user fees. So if you purchase a ticket, there's that $4.50 that's on the bottom of your ticket that comes back to the airport that we can use toward construction. There's some excise taxes on your ticket.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:30] What's an excise tax?

Brian Ellestad: [00:06:32] It's a user fee. It's a tax. Call it what you want. But it's a I think it's like $5.17 or something like that. That goes into a pot for every ticket that's purchased and we compete for it. Mhm.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:42] Wait. Nationally. I'm sorry.

Brian Ellestad: [00:06:43] That's that's nationally.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:44] National excise tax.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:46] So you compete. What is how does that competition work.

Brian Ellestad: [00:06:48] So part of it is actual apportioned. So if you have X amount of passengers you're expected to get x. Okay. Then on top of that you compete meaning you have you have to score your project high with FAA. So obviously we keep a very close contact with our local Helena office or the northwest region to make sure they know the need, show them. I mean, I would send them pictures. Here's our whole rooms. This is how full they are, you know, just try and build your story of that. You know, it's not very efficient. Um, it's, you know, it's we need to bring better heating and cooling in there and, you know, just it's scored well. So that's where you compete for that money. It's called discretionary money.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:30] So were it not for that discretionary money, we would probably not have the facility that we do out here.

Brian Ellestad: [00:07:36] Um, it would have been a much harder if we would have been in debt for a lot longer down the road.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:40] And it's not just folks who buy tickets, you guys. I mean, there's all these retail spaces and rental car spaces in the airport. How do they contribute to funding the airport?

Brian Ellestad: [00:07:50] Parking is probably our number one revenue producer. Then rental cars. Well, if FAA money is probably right there and then, um, locally, it's the rental cars and the parking costs. So that's why parking is very important to us. But we also understand the value of parking. So we just recently created an economy lot that's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:08] I've loved the economy lot. I'm glad bucks a day.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:12] I did not realize that until now. You have great signage and right now. But I missed it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:19] And walking. I walk through the rental car area and go in that that, uh, east door and it's really easy.

Brian Ellestad: [00:08:25] It's pretty close.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:26] It's not a bad walk at all.

Brian Ellestad: [00:08:27] So, Dave, what I tell you is follow the rental car signs. It's probably the easiest way. I'm starting to explain it because you can call we can have signs for Economy Lab. They come in and they want to park. They just take the first left.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:39] That's what I did. The closest, the closest space to the terminal I took.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:42] And then the instructions, I think, are to make a little fire of $20 bills. When the fire is out, you're parking is done. That's, you know, you're finished then.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:53] So you've you've been around the block here, uh, a while with, uh, the airport and Missoula. And if you were to compare the year 2025 to when you when you arrived here. What sort of trends or uh or uh differences have you seen over time with those who are using the airport or the, the airlines themselves?

Brian Ellestad: [00:09:16] Probably leisure traffic. Um, obviously Covid is the big trigger for Montana was discovered. So leisure traffic and then really the music scene has really taken off here. Logjam and Kettlehouse amphitheater, you know got the the big Sky brewery and and now the big uh, new one, the Zoo town festival. I mean, it's really it's become a destination.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:37] So you're seeing folks fly in for those events.

Brian Ellestad: [00:09:40] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of days where, you know, I'll be out wandering around and. Hey, why are you here? Well, I'm here for the last two years ago, we had Pearl jam. It was back to back concerts, and they were here for both.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:53] Wow. So people often use airport traffic as a barometer for the economy. What sort of trends have you seen in terms of passenger numbers, where they're coming from, length of stay, any of those sorts of things that you can rattle off.

Brian Ellestad: [00:10:06] So we don't get length of stay data. All I can tell you is I think we're in our 18th month of record, 18 months in a row of record consecutive in a row.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:16] So that's incredible.

Brian Ellestad: [00:10:16] Unfortunately, with the runway closure, I'm going to have to start from zero, probably because we lost the week in September. So I doubt we'll hit a record in September. But yeah, it's been about 18 months in a row of record traffic.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:27] So we are on an upward growth curve.

Brian Ellestad: [00:10:29] Yeah. But again it always seems like an economy. It's I always say is, you know, you just there's a lot of unknown in the economy right now. Yeah. And Montana always seems late to the party. It's true. But late to get out of the to get back into the party. It's in the short. Well, I've been here 14 plus years, so. Yeah, that's what I've kind of noticed. I came here during the downturn. Right? And, you know, it's been up since then.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:53] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:54] So this is a little different. How do different levels of government cooperate to, uh, support like an airport like ours?

Brian Ellestad: [00:11:00] Well, number one, I think we've got a great work relationship. You guys elect our board members and we've always gotten great board members.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:07] It's a competitive one of all the boards we have. When there's a spot on the airport board, we get way more applicants than there are positions and we get incredible applicants.

Brian Ellestad: [00:11:16] And it shows because we got great people on our board. Again, we don't get local tax dollars. So it's, you know, it's just building the relationships with you guys with the city because now we're annexed into the city. But it's really the FAA is kind of where the funding comes from. What I tell my board and our staff is always have shovel ready projects designed ready to go so that when the time comes or if a project falls through somewhere else, we can step up and get get funding.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:44] That's an old Shane Stack mantra, which do do 30% engineering. So when there's an opportunity you're you're funding proposals.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:52] Well, speaking, I guess. Speaking of that, uh, what shovel ready projects might be on the, uh, short or distant horizon?

Brian Ellestad: [00:12:00] Uh, so we just did our main runway. But then there's, you know, obviously we got lots of other concrete and asphalt areas, but so the parallel taxiway to the runway, that'll be probably or two years from now. And there's another one called Taxiway Golf that leads into the Forest Service. That gets a lot of use obviously in the summer that needs a big a big rehab. We just decommissioned our crosswind runway. I don't know if you knew that, but we are. We had a crosswind runway that was only 4500ft long, which wasn't good for commercial aircraft. And we really didn't have the the need for that anymore based on traffic counts. So we're going to reutilize that payment for a taxiway so that we can build more general aviation. We can free up that area for general aviation, use hangars, businesses, stuff like that.

Juanita Vero: [00:12:47] Where's that material come from or who who does that work?

Brian Ellestad: [00:12:50] So our runway, the general contractor was Selinger up in Columbia Falls. So we only got two bids him and then knife River. Selinger did an awesome job. We had interest from Spokane Obviously, um, somebody in Bozeman, but only we only ended up with two bidders.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:06] Gotcha.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:13:06] Do you ever see a need for a second parallel runway? And if so, what would the threshold of volume be for that?

Brian Ellestad: [00:13:16] We don't quite meet that threshold yet. I think we're forecasting in that 5 to 10 year range. And we just went through our airport master plan. Our master plan that was done 15 years ago, done just before I got here. That called for a very big separation between the current one and the other one. Um, when we went through the master plan this time, we just couldn't see that we needed that much separation. So we are we proposed to bring it closer in. Much like Boise, Idaho has a parallel runway that's closer. And our tower, when they set that up, there's only viewing out one direction. So if you move the parallel to the opposite side, our tower is now designed wrong. So we moved the parallel future parallel to on on the north side of the current control tower. So better viewing There's room for it. Um, but I would say realistically, it's going to take if we were to start today, it'd be 5 to 6 years before we could even build it, just because of all the all the steps and hoops we have to go through.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:12] I mean, with the traffic, like the air traffic, with our mountains, with our weather. I was in kind of an interesting situation on Friday, flying around in a tiny plane. I wasn't flying, I was being flown around on a tiny plane. And, um, it was the first time I ever really paid attention to their air traffic control conversation because things were crowded and I was like, huh? What are the considerations there?

Brian Ellestad: [00:14:36] They would probably separate traffic based on the speed of the aircraft, small and large. Um, so that way they could meter stuff depending on how fast somebody comes in or a commercial has keeps priority, keeps their speed up, or the smaller airplanes fly at a slower speed per se. So they would just kind of line them up on the on the parallel runway.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:55] I mean, it was difficult to see the smaller airplanes flying around. I mean, it was. Uh, so then, um, and then, uh, you're talking about air traffic control. Is that a is that separate from your airport operations? How does how does that get staffed or trained or what happens?

Brian Ellestad: [00:15:13] So the control tower is completely different from us. We don't manage it at all. But we do own the control tower. So that's unique. The building, the building we own, we maintain do.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:22] Lease it to the feds.

Brian Ellestad: [00:15:23] Then they get to use it. We just bought it and they get to use it. It's not FAA proper, but it's called a company called Serco. It's a contract tower. And they manage the people that are in there. So there's FAA controllers. Then there's contract controllers. And where that contract control all the Montana airports and.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:40] Those folks move around. Or do they stay?

Brian Ellestad: [00:15:42] They stay. So we have a manager and people we have people who actually live in Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:47] Is that pretty consistent with smaller airports?

Brian Ellestad: [00:15:49] Yeah. Um, Helena is actually an FAA tower. I just based on legacy or, you know, how timing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:57] Wise. So here's a little departure in terms of questions. What's it like being the director of the airport. I mean, what's the what's the kind of thing you do? What what's a typical day like?

Brian Ellestad: [00:16:05] So I'd say it's varied. Um, you know, we're unique. We are in the ground handling business as an airport. That doesn't happen very often. What does that mean when you check in for your flight? Yeah. Like if you go to Delta or United, they're contracted unify employees that are that are paid through Delta. Um American, Allegiant, frontier sun country. I'll pick the airport to ground handle them so that we have actually airport employees at above and below wings kind of the industry words check you in and put you on the aircraft. So it's actually airport authority employees that are doing that. So if you have a.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:38] Complaint.

Brian Ellestad: [00:16:39] From American and all those, those other three, you can blame me.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:43] But and then the the other ones.

Brian Ellestad: [00:16:45] Alaska.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:46] Work with.

Brian Ellestad: [00:16:47] Their own corporates.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:48] Okay. Wow. That's that's really.

Brian Ellestad: [00:16:50] So I might be out pushing a wheelchair. I mean that and do whatever. I mean it's pretty much all over the board on a day. It's federal funding is a big one. [00:16:57] But I think what's unique, too, is what people forget is an airport is like a small city. You know, we have our own police, our own fire, our own EMS, our own street department, our own building department, you name it can come up during the day. [00:17:09]

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:09]  [00:17:09]You're the CEO of a pretty big organization. [00:17:11]

Brian Ellestad: [00:17:11]  [00:17:11]Or the mayor or whatever you want to call. [00:17:12]

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:12] It. How many employees do you guys have?

Brian Ellestad: [00:17:14] Right around just shy of 50 full time. Another 50 in the ground handling business, we have about a $14 million budget.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:21] Wow.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:21] Comparing yourself, not yourself personally, but the the airport to other regional airports. Uh, in the in the vicinity across the state of Montana or beyond, is there do you, do you sense a, uh, a spirit of competition or collegiality or, or all working for the to get some of the same customers or or not?

Brian Ellestad: [00:17:44] I'd say it's a little bit of both.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:46] Yeah.

Brian Ellestad: [00:17:46] I'd say all of us in the state have a great working relationship. So we Missoula started up with what's called an airport rendezvous, where we bring airline route planners to your city. Well, then now it's rotating around the state. So we just Kalispell hosted it this year. So all of us got together. We together. We did what's called speed dating and but we all, you know, share notes. And you know, what's good for the state is eventually good for all of us.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:18:09] How about, uh, and maybe this plays into the the issue of competition a little bit. I, I've noticed as I've been doing some personal shopping for, uh, the best airfares that, uh, there can be some significant differences between Missoula and other airports within striking distance. What accounts for that?

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:31] That's a great question.

Brian Ellestad: [00:18:32] So sometimes you're going to see that we're cheaper and sometimes you're going to see we're more expensive. It's all. So there's a department called revenue Management in an airline. And they are going to price it. Price it. So what they think. And now with artificial intelligence out there they're going to probably try and guesstimate. You know what what what do you think you're going to pay. And they'll price it accordingly based on how many seats have sold to date. Historical. You know, they know there's a big event in the city. They're going to raise the price a little bit. So it's all you know chicken egg. It's they're going to see just they're going to try and get that the most out of the out of the customer that they can get.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:09] Interesting.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:09] Yeah.

Brian Ellestad: [00:19:10] And I'm seeing more competition I mean that's why we're happy that Americans are coming to our market with Chicago here year round are starting December 18th. So that'll really spur competition. Fantastic. The more competition to lower the price.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:22] Yeah. Nonstop to Chicago starting December.

Brian Ellestad: [00:19:25] Right now they did it summer only. Okay. Um, but, uh, coming in December, uh, we use our small Community Air Service grant. That's where the community raised local dollars for matching dollars. So we signed a contract with American, and they'll provide daily Chicago service.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:42] Is this kind of a guarantee that that they know they're going to get a certain amount of revenue, even if they don't get the passengers and they kind of trial it, and then hopefully enough passengers sign on and then it just becomes part of what they do.

Brian Ellestad: [00:19:53] Yep. So the goal is to enter the market risk free so they're guaranteed to, you know, make a marginal profit. You know, based on our loads we see today, we shouldn't even need the revenue guarantee. But I can't imagine it not being successful, just like our San Francisco back in the day was successful. Dallas was.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:11] On trial for.

Brian Ellestad: [00:20:13] Its year contract.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:14] Okay, so where can a person fly direct to right now from Missoula?

Brian Ellestad: [00:20:18] Well, you're going to get me going here. So Alaska is, you know, Seattle.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:22] Seattle.

Brian Ellestad: [00:20:22] Portland, Portland daily and then Seattle, San Diego just Saturdays where we're looking to expand that delta is Minneapolis Salt Lake. We're working on trying to get Atlanta back next summer for just on Saturdays.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:34] Atlanta.

Brian Ellestad: [00:20:35] Wow. We had it pre-COVID, um, on Saturdays only. And then United's actually now took over from Delta. They're a market leader. So Denver and Chicago they did tell us they're upgrading San Francisco to mainline aircraft next summer. So that was good to hear.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:52] What do you have done at Texas?

Brian Ellestad: [00:20:54] Texas. We have Dallas on American. Um, and obviously American. Then does Chicago and LA in the summertime. Sun country just does some less than brief summer stuff in Minneapolis. And I'll tell you, it's a great way to get to Minneapolis if the dates work out for you. It's cheap, $69 one way. Wow.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:12] Holy smokes.

Brian Ellestad: [00:21:12] Um, so we'd love to get that, um. Doing better. Frontier dips its toes in and out of Missoula. They were here this summer just to Denver, but they're kind of doing something interesting. They're coming back for two weeks in October, two weeks in November and two weeks in December. Um, I can't think of who else I'm missing, but. So Alaska. United. Delta. American.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:32] Frontier.

Brian Ellestad: [00:21:33] Frontier. Sun. Country. Oh, allegiance.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:35] Allegiance.

Brian Ellestad: [00:21:35] Allegiant. So, Vegas and, uh. Phoenix.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:38] Wow. Are there.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:39] Are there any airlines left that you would like to, um, see here?

Brian Ellestad: [00:21:44] I would say, I mean, breeze is a new startup airline. That would be interesting.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:49] I haven't even heard of that one.

Brian Ellestad: [00:21:50] They do, uh, Airbus A220 aircraft. Great airplane. Um, got lots of long legs, but we'd love to get them to do something. Maybe some California, Burbank or Phoenix, something like that. I think other than that, it's frequencies like to get Minneapolis back up to double daily at minimum during the winter time. Because when we go back to a single flight in the winter time, it's tough because it's either 8 a.m. or nothing. The Minneapolis. So it'd be nice to get that midday, that midday and that earlier return from the East coast.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:18] Great. Thanks for all that.

Brian Ellestad: [00:22:20] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:20] So how does a smokejumper center overlap with what you guys do?

Brian Ellestad: [00:22:24] So in the summer, it's busy. So if you want to be busy traffic wise out there, you know what? The Forest Service leases a hangar from us. That's where they're. They service their aircraft out there, but then they also own land that's adjacent part of the airport, where they fill up air tankers and a lot of helicopters and, and aircraft that drop the retardant are based that during the summertime. So and that was one of our considerations for our runway closure was one of the conversations we had to have was, you know, we know August is terrible. September. Are you willing to roll the dice? Because usually, historically, September is not as bad for fighting fires. And you know, they said, yep, we agree with you. Please don't do August. We're okay with September. And we'll move. Move aircraft to other airports in the area. And everything worked out good.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:13] Great. So anything you feel like people should know about the airport that we haven't hit on?

Juanita Vero: [00:23:18] So.

Brian Ellestad: [00:23:19] So if you haven't been to the airport recently and you want to see it, or if you just want to meet your loved one at the gate, we have a pass program called explore MSO. You go to our website and search explore MSO. It's a drop down menu. You can put in your information. You can just go through the checkpoint like any other customer and go visit our concessions. Go walk around the terminal. Go meet your friend at the gate.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:42] Go through security.

Brian Ellestad: [00:23:43] So we just.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:44] Need all the way upstairs.

Brian Ellestad: [00:23:45] Like see? Fun fact.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:47] That is.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:48] A great fact.

Brian Ellestad: [00:23:49] We just need either 24 or 48 hours advance notice so we can vet you, just like a regular passenger. And TSA gets fed the information and you just show them your ID.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:58] And let you in. Josh.

Brian Ellestad: [00:23:58] I know, just show them your ID and you go through like any other passenger.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:02] Wow, that is a cool, fun fact. Yeah, thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:05] Just on the website. What's the website again?

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:06] Fly Missoula. Fly Missoula.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:09] What's the. What's the service?

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:10] It's called explore.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:11] Mso or MSO. That's fantastic.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:14] That's a good.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:14] One. Well, I guess we're going to wrap up here, but, um, share with us a good book or nugget of wisdom you've come across.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:21] Anything anything interesting in the world of culture you've stumbled on? Feel like it's worth repeating?

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:25] I don't know about that, but I guess the most book I throw is I usually go to the bookstore and look for a local Montana. I think I'm reading Painted Horses right now. I've just started it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:34] But you know that.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:35] One, Malcolm Brooks? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:38] I try and do a local.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:39] Great.

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:40] Local author. Usually when I go in there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:43] I'm sure he has.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:44] I'm sure. That's awesome. Oh that's great.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:46] Great.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:46] Well, thanks so much for joining us.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:48] Yeah. Thanks for all the great work you guys have done at the airport. It means a ton to you.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:51] Have a lot to be proud about.

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:52] We keep busy. I'll say that on time.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:55] Under budget. Yeah. Who can say that for an airport?

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:57] Amazing.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:58] Missoula County. Ken?

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:59] Of course.

Brian Ellestad: [00:24:59] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:01] Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Brian. Thank you guys. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:13] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:19] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:31] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:38] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:46] Thanks for listening.