Dec. 10, 2024

The Sioux Falls Regional Airport could address immediate space needs while potentially expanding air service as a new concourse expansion starts to come together.

Executive director Dan Letellier detailed the concept Tuesday for the Sioux Falls City Council. It would add a net gain of at least four gates, potentially five. Right now, the city has six regularly usable gates and a seventh where a jet bridge was added so passengers don’t have to get on and off the plane outside.

“We’re falling behind,” Letellier said, calling it a “significant need to add additional gates.”

The gates were designed for aircraft seating 50 to 70 people, but as aircraft size has grown in response to a shortage of pilots, the planes currently serving Sioux Falls range from 72 to 114 seats.

Space already is beyond capacity at many times on the concourse, Letellier said.

“Quite often, all our gates are full,” he said. “Literally, it’s standing room only … you can’t even sit on the floor, and that’s a challenge. That’s what we’re trying to remedy.”

The plan to add gates would veer off to a new hallway from the security checkpoint and potentially include a new atrium for additional seating, food and retail if funds were available.

Projections show that the city should be at 11 gates and more than 32,000 square feet of space for passengers by 2026, compared with the 10,000 square feet available today.

A final phase would include an additional gate and allow lower-level build-out for federal inspection, “so we could clear those flights from Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, directly into Sioux Falls, but that would come at a later date,” Letellier said.

The additional gates could allow for more frequency to cities such as Atlanta or provide an option to offer a flight to Washington, D.C. The airport is in conversations around a potential flight to Reagan National Airport, Letellier said.

“We have enough people already to support that flight. We even have some state funding from a couple years ago to help with risk abatement, so we have a lot of things going in our direction for a new route to D.C.”

Costs are estimated from $83.5 million to $108 million depending on the scope of the project, and estimates are being finalized, Letellier said.

There’s $31.6 million confirmed in federal funds and $28 million in discretionary federal funds that aren’t finalized but have “a lot of positive assurances,” he said.

The airport is planning to bond for about $26 million. Combined with $2.5 million in existing funding from the state, that would be enough for the “bare-bones” concourse expansion, he said. The hope is to work with the state or city to secure about $20 million to do the full project, which Letellier describes as a “generational project.”

If capacity isn’t increased, fares could go up, he added.

“Fares will be $600, $700, $800 … and they (passengers) will go on the road. I can’t blame them for doing that either,” he said. “It is necessary. It is something we need to take on and accomplish.”

In the meantime, the airport is trending toward another record year, with air travel up 6 percent compared with a year ago. Thirty of the past 34 months have set new records, and aircraft have a load factor of 85.5 percent.

“To get that full, it means almost every flight is full,” Letellier said.

The new parking ramp, which opened late this fall and added 950 spaces, also was full the day before Thanksgiving and has been trending at 80 percent to 90 percent occupied.

“It’s very likely from Christmas through Easter it will be full most of the time,” Letellier said.