St. Cloud-Chicago flights ending in April

St. Cloud will lose its twice-daily flight connection to Chicago in the spring, said Mayor Dave Kleis.

SkyWest Airlines, which operates two round-trip United Airlines flights a day between the cities, told Kleis Wednesday that it will suspend the service on April 6. Customers can still book flights up until that date.

Kleis said the city attracted the flights with more than $1 million in subsidies for the airline, but those funds are running out. The company told him it can't afford to keep running the flights.

"You look at roads and bridges and transits that we have, this is a piece of that," Kleis said. "It connects you to the world. It's an important part of economic development. Our business community strongly has advocated it and supported it."

Flights were less reliable than Kleis had hoped, he said, in part because of the September fire at an air traffic control center in Chicago. He says he'd like to secure funding from the Legislature to bring the flights back.