By Denise Ross

If you’re running for statewide office in 2008, but you won’t have the budget of, say, John Thune in 2004, this new air taxi service might interest you.

I attended the launch party of this new service, called VisionAir Share, at the Elks Theatre in Rapid City last week. (You can watch a video at the VisionAir website.)

Michael Reynolds, one of the people behind VisionAir, called it ”a carpool in the sky,” a combination of a charter service and commercial flying. The more people who fly VisionAir, the cheaper it gets.

Here’s the brochure.

The new service has a 4-plane fleet of “cabin-class aircraft,” with the individual planes being able to handle up to 10 passengers. People can book flights at the VisionAir site (link is embedded above.)

This is aimed at professionals who travel regionally, but it strikes me as one way to get more mileage out of a campaign budget - literally. The planes will land anywhere there’s a servicable air strip, so a candidate could make that noon Rotary meeting in Winner without an overnight, or even an all-day, trip.

Dan Daly wrote about this in the Rapid City Journal:

Ride-sharers wouldn’t have to be headed to the same city. A plane could stop in Pierre, Aberdeen and Sioux Falls in the morning – and reverse the route at the end of the day.

Here was the crowd at the launch party, enjoying refreshments in the Elks lobby.

Right now, Rapid City is the only departure city listed online, but since the plane is able to make stops anywhere - in fact that’s the plan - I’ll be it won’t be long before the service provides a way to pick people up, just like it drops people off.

VisionAir is part of a trend. See this recent story from NPR.

Up, up and away!

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