2025 has proven to be another strong year for Durango-La Plata County Airport with record-setting passenger travel every month through November.
DRO Aviation Director Tony Vicari said passenger growth from Jan. 1 through November is up 13%, totaling 259,517 passengers compared with 229,642 passengers in the same time frame last year.
“Pretty robust activity across the board,” he said, pointing to upward trends in major airport operations.
Concession revenue, parking utilization and rental car contract days are all up in addition to outgoing local passengers and inbound travelers.
DRO data show:
- Airline seat capacity – the total number of passengers airlines could accommodate assuming every seat was filled Jan. 1 through October – rose 10% to 281,169.
- The airline load factor – the percentage of seats sold Jan. 1 through October – rose 3% to nearly 85% this year compared with 92% last year.
- From Jan. 1 through October, parking lot exit transactions totaled 58,086, a 15% increase from 50,601 transactions in 2024.
- From the start of the year through September, rental car contract days totaled 147,812, an 18% increase from 125,525 contract days last year.
- Concession revenue in the DRO terminal totaled $1.5 million through September this year, a 6% increase in revenue from last year.
- Air freight volume from Jan. 1 through September totaled 1.23 million pounds, a 9% increase from air freight volume in 2024.
DRO has experienced record growth annually since 2023 after the airport was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Vicari said Thanksgiving is one of DRO’s busiest periods of the year, more so for parking than for airline passenger traffic because more locals are traveling out of town to visit family elsewhere.
Despite passenger traffic the week before Thanksgiving being up 12% compared with last year, DRO experienced a 5% reduction in maximum vehicle occupancy this Thanksgiving compared with last year. He said that is thanks to the use of surge pricing, remote shuttle parking and marketing efforts encouraging carpooling, pick up and drop off, and other alternative transportation options in the lead up to the holiday.
“If we leave (parking) unaddressed, what essentially results is you have an overflow event where we run out of physical space to park vehicles because it’s completely uncontrolled. And then you have folks arriving at the airport with nowhere to park. It becomes chaotic,” he said. “People are desperate, they’ve already booked flights. That is not a situation we want to put our users into. So we’re really challenged with creating a situation proactively to try to manage that.”
DRO avoided such an overflow event and ended up with a “pretty low-stress Thanksgiving,” he said.
About 150 vehicles were parked in the airport’s remote overflow lot, and the airport maintained capacity in its standard terminal overflow lot. He said DRO added 150 paved spaces in the summer to expand its total parking capacity to approximately 1,300 spaces.
Phase 1B of DRO’s terminal expansion project remains in progress, with renovations nearing completion on a connection between the airport’s new baggage claim space and the rest of the terminal expected to open before the end of the year, he said.
He said the project’s next major milestone following the new connection will be the opening of a new Transportation Security Administration screening checkpoint, food and beverage concessions space and airline gate space, planned for June or July.
The federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1 and lasted 43 days – the longest shutdown in U.S. history – resulted in 30 canceled flights in the first half of November, Vicari said.
“It had a very real impact on us,” he said.
DRO had between 10% and 14% monthly passenger growth in the first 10 months of the year, but November saw only 7% growth, data show.
The flight cancellations were mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration, which required airlines to cut down their flight schedules to avoid overloading air traffic control that was beginning to face significant staffing issues countrywide, he said.
“Thankfully, once the shutdown ended, within a handful of days the FAA had removed those orders and flight restrictions were no longer required, and so we’ve been running as normal for the last three weeks,” he said.
About 27 TSA officers at DRO worked without pay for over six weeks, he said, acknowledging the federal government personnel’s commitment to continue doing their jobs and that they’ve since received backpay.
cburney@durangoherald.com
