COLORADO SPRINGS – Wednesday was a big day for the Colorado Springs Airport as a formal award presentation was held to recognize it as the “2019 Colorado Airport of the Year.”
This award is the first of its kind to recognize Colorado airports that make contributions to public aviation.
The award, given by the CDOT Division of Aeronautics, is a great boost for the airport, but News 5 wanted to dig deeper and find out how it got to this point, particularly in terms of growth.
Denver International Airport of course remains a huge competitor, but some good news for the Colorado Springs Airport is that it’s had a 40 percent growth in its air service in the last three years.
What could bring more traffic to the airport? Some changes a lot of people would like to see are lower fares and more airlines to choose from.
Janelle Moran said, “It’d be nice if there were more than just two flights from LA… we’ve got Frontier, American, and United so it’d be great if there was like Southwest or other carriers.”
Greg Phillips, director of aviation at the Colorado Springs Airport, said, “What we do first is make sure that the service that we have is strong and sustainable. Then we look to build with our current carriers and then we look at additional carriers.”
The airport says it has had conversations with all the major U.S. carriers like Southwest, but no word yet if they’ll come to Colorado Springs.
The airport says that through April there were about 454,000 passengers that traveled through the Colorado Springs Airport. This is about a 15 percent decrease in year-to-date traffic compared to the same period in 2018.
However, the airport says an increase in load indicates that flights are more full.
