State of 208: Boise Airport is taking off

If you think you're seeing more flights coming and going out of Boise, you are not imagining things. As the Treasure Valley grows, the demand to fly to more locations is taking off, and that means opportunity for current and future airlines.

Sean Briggs has been the spokesman for the Boise Airport for about four and half years, and even in that short amount of time, things have changed drastically. "Since 2014, our passenger traffic has increased over 40 percent in 2018 alone. We had a record year at 3.9 million passengers and that's up ten percent from 2017."

The Boise Airport recently completed their master plan that began in 2015 to look at short-, medium-, and long-term growth. And what that means is they have to keep up with Idaho's explosive growth.

Briggs explains. "When I look at schedules comparing seat capacity, I look out through March and there is an increase from four to six percent through March of this year."

One of the areas of growth at the airport is another concourse. More gates, more flights, more people. It would extend west by the area where the rental cars are right now. And we can't forget about parking. Briggs says that always seems to come up in conversation.

"The goal is to have additional parking spaces closer in so passengers won't have to walk that far."

There is not a set timeframe for these items, but as they say in the transportation business, everything is demand driven. Stay tuned.