Rapid City Regional Airport sees increase in passengers

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - Rapid City Regional Airport saw an increase in traffic last month. January saw 35% more passengers than in January 2022 and about 9% more than the same month in 2019. These numbers suggest that any decline felt from COVID has now passed and the airport expects to see passenger numbers increase through the Summer.

“We’re hoping for a really good year this year as we’ve been working to recover from coming out of our dip in numbers from COVID, goin forward into the future we expect to see hopefully the rest of this year that we’ve got some more potential record numbers as well,” said Patrick Dame, the executive director at Rapid City Regional Airport.

The increase in passengers means Rapid City Regional Airport is no longer a “no hub” airport and is now a “small hub” airport.

“What that means for us is we’ve got some additional regulations that we have to meet along the way but it also may open us up for some additional funding to be able to make improvements as we go forward in the future in developing our airport to meet our facilities needs,” said Dame.

Dame says he is optimistic about future developments.

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