Rapid City, S.D. (KELO) — The Rapid City Regional Airport is seeing record numbers this spring.
The airport broke its previous first quarter records for passenger enplanements.
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A big part of the success at the airport is thanks to the new direct travel destinations they introduced this past year.
“Firstly, we’re a really resilient travel destination, especially for tourism. Also after Covid-19 airlines really scaled back their regional travel operations and we’re starting to see that return. So in markets where they had less than daily servic,e they sometimes lost those markets but they’re coming back. An example of this is the Atlanta flights that’ll begin on Saturdays,” Marketing and Air Service Manager Megan Johnson said.
This record-breaking first quarter for the Rapid City Regional Airport has seen passenger traffic increase by over 9%. Which is over 153,000 passengers traveling out of this airport.
“I thought it was pretty simple, it’s a relatively small airport, especially from what I’m used to which is very chaotic at LAX. So I thought this was very easy to navigate. Not very many places to get lost,” Traveler Alyssa Fowlds said.
2024 saw more than 856,000 passengers, up nearly 22% from their previous best. Now with this quarter’s record, things are looking up for the summer.
“Our staff is prepared for a busy summer here after last year’s ground-breaking numbers. We hope that the momentum continues, especially with landmark events like the Sturgis Rally coming up. We expect a busy summer and we don’t expect the momentum to be slowing anytime soon,” Johnson said.
The airport says the record numbers are encouraging as it continues work on a terminal expansion project.
