Airline Offers Rockslide Special

For hundreds of drivers, Wednesday's busy travel schedule was a little longer because of a massive rockslide in Polk County, Tennessee.  Highway 64 along the Ocoee River is shut down because of the rubble that covers the road.  But one company has come up with a way around, or at least over, the mess.

Taylor Newman is used to firing up the engine and flying off to Florida or Nashville or Knoxville, but Copperhill isn't usually on his radar. 

"This flight from Chattanooga is going to be in the 25 minute range," Newman says while readying his plane.  "From Collegdale it's 15 to 20 minutes."

Newman flies for Crystal Air and decided to add trips to Copperhill after a rockslide cut off the main artery into town.  He's now offering one-way or round-trip flights.  The short hop over the mountains is much quicker than drivers who take the detour. 

"With no traffic I think one of the guys said it'd take them about an hour and 45 minutes," he says, "but then we had somebody else tell us it was over two hours because it was bumper to bumper."

Newman's wife is actually from Polk County, the part that's past the rockslide.  So he knows first-hand just how important it is for family members to be able to see each other.  It's important for "friends and relatives and folks she went to high school with that live here, work up there or vice versa," Newman says.

So far, Crystal Air has a couple of customers, including several people just trying to get home for Thanksgiving.  But he suspects most of his clients will come from the corporate world. 

"Actually most of them are Cleveland or Chattanooga needing to go up there for business purposes."

And about half-way through the flight, you get a bird's eye view right over the rockslide.  There is tons of debris the Tennessee Department of Transportation will have to remove before the road reopens.  After that, Newman doubts he'll continue the flights.  That is if no more mountains decide to move.

A round trip to Copperhill from Cleveland or Collegedale costs $75, from Chattanooga it costs $90.  One-way trips cost about half as much.  Keep in mind if you're driving round-trip, the detour is about four hours worth of gas.