The fast pace of growth at the Durango-La Plata County Airport will likely continue next year, and on Thursday the Airport Commission discussed ways to encourage the trend.
Frontier Airlines’ departure from the airport will likely lead to a 2.4 percent decline in the number of people boarding planes in 2015 compared with 2014.
But if American Airlines and U.S. Airways had not added service to make up the difference, the airport could have seen double-digit percentage declines, said Kip Turner, aviation director.
“We’ve almost rebounded in one year,” he said.
By the end of September, American had increased the number of seats it provided by almost 45 percent up to 29,744 from 20,569 in 2014 and U.S. Airways had increased its service by 23 percent up to 33,700 from 27,335 in 2014.
“We are very pleased with American’s growth, and I only see it continuing,” he said.
This is particularly noteworthy because Frontier didn’t announce it would no longer serve Durango until April of this year, and so the other airlines didn’t have much time to plan for new service, said Tony Vicari, an operations specialist with the airport.
Continued growth will likely mean bigger commercial planes serving the airport, and Turner is hopeful they could make an appearance in a year or two.
With larger planes there could be fewer departures from the airport, he said. But it could make the airport less vulnerable to effects of the nationwide pilot shortage.
The more experienced, higher-paid pilots are recruited to fly the larger planes and sometimes it leaves the airlines scrambling to find pilots for the smaller planes.
Making sure passenger demand is high enough to fill these potential planes and working to stop leakage to larger airports was a major point of discussion among the commissioners.
A recent study based on ticket sales showed close to half of all the people from the region are driving to Denver or Albuquerque to fly instead of taking a local plane.
The commission urged airport staff to look into why people are choosing Denver and Albuquerque over Durango to help design the airport’s new marketing plan.
“We don’t really understand the root causes of the leakage,” said commissioner Gary Derck.
Although commissioners did surmise ticket prices, reliability of flights and a traveler’s desire to cut out layovers likely all play a role.
The airport is proposing increasing its advertising budget from about $25,000 to $60,000 in 2016.
Ballantine Communications Inc., which owns The Durango Herald, submitted a marketing plan to the airport that the commissioners could review.
But a request for bids on a marketing contract has not been made public, said Julie Brown, Durango’s director of finance.
None of this money can actively be spent on promoting a yes vote to raise taxes for a new terminal.
But as part of the marketing discussion, commissioner Tom Greenhut suggested possibly changing the name of the airport to include the word regional.
Durango Regional Airport or Durango-La Plata County Regional Airport were both suggested.
Commissioners agreed the change could help the airport’s perception ahead of a potential 2016 vote on a tax increase to fund a new airport terminal.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
