Durango-La Plata County Airport is in a situation similar to an airline passenger with a layover indefinitely extended by a blizzard.

Unlike stranded passengers who survive by sleeping on lounge furniture and eating potato chips from a vending machine, the airport has found some comfortable temporary quarters as it waits for answers to so many future unknowns.

The airport is struggling with bursting-at-the-seams growth. Passenger traffic is up 13 percent for the year and on pace to top 200,000 boardings for the first time in its history.

Boardings were up almost 5 percent in June, which is remarkable growth for such a peak travel month, said Kip Turner, the airport’s director of aviation.

Because of overcrowding, the security line to get into the departure lounge has had to temporarily shut down this year at times as a safety precaution.

To alleviate congestion, the airport Thursday more than doubled its departure-lounge space with the addition of a 4,500-square-foot fabric structure that was purchased for $700,000.

The combined lounge can now accommodate more than 400 passengers comfortably, but the addition is so new that travelers don’t know it’s there.

“We need to put up banner signs,” Turner said. “‘Go in here.’”

The fabric structure also buys time for the cramped airport to make a connection.

The airport is commissioning an engineering study that will help local officials determine whether it would be smarter for Durango to expand the 25-year-old facility or else build a new terminal from the ground up.

If everything goes well, Turner anticipates the airport could be breaking ground on an expansion or a new terminal a year from now. Ballpark estimates put a new terminal at $25 million to $30 million.

Whatever the final destination, the airport can now afford to wait out the layover with extra leg room.

From the outside, the bright white fabric structure resembles the Cirque du Soleil-style top on the main terminal at Denver International Airport.

From the inside, “it doesn’t look at all like a tent,” Sherri Dugdale, the city’s public information officer, said jokingly.

The fabric structure, which had a new car smell when toured on Friday, is connected to the western side of the older lounge with a hallway.

It feels spacious, with air ducts for heat and air conditioning, carpeting, seating for 175, and window views of the runways and surrounding mountains.

It has some amenities that the older lounge does not have, such as a monitor with flight information and a later addition of a restroom trailer that will be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Turner also said he was interested in getting a coffee stand in the departure lounge. Because he is in the process of reviewing the airport’s commercial leases, he could not comment about what vendors might provide in the future.

Turner is talking with American Airlines and U.S. Airways about moving their departure counters to the fabric structure addition. The two airlines are in the process of merging. American’s airplane parking spot is closer to the fabric structure.

Passengers could then walk out the doors of the fabric structure to their planes.

Because the fabric structure could accommodate all four of the airport’s airline departure counters, the fabric structure allows for the flexibility to close off different sections of the airport during construction.

Because the addition is temporary, Turner said it could be disassembled and sold to another airport once the expansion or new terminal is complete.

“We made sure to build it where it would have a high resale value to another airport,” he said.

For the time being, the fabric structure complements a second screening line that was added in mid-June.

“When they push them through the lines, they now have a place to go,” Turner said. “It’s a good thing to have somewhere to go.”

jhaug@durangoherald.com