Travelers packed the Durango-La Plata County Airport’s parking lots over Thanksgiving, forcing the airport to open up an improvised parking area.
“Never before have we seen such demand for parking,” Interim Airport Director Tony Vicari said in an email.
The packed lots are a good sign for the airport traffic, but it’s too soon to say whether the airport saw more travelers this November than last year. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” Vicari said.
It’s been a somewhat erratic year for traffic at the airport, and through October the number of people boarding planes was down 2.1 percent, from 160,520 in 2015 to 157,179.
Thanksgiving is historically the peak time for travelers to park in the lots, but as traffic increases, Vicari expects the lots could be insufficient more often. He said plans need to be made to handle more growth.
In November, residents voted down a property tax increase to build a new terminal on the east side of the runway. The Durango-La Plata Airport Commission plans to explore alternative solutions.
To handle the demand for parking on Nov. 24-25, airport staff members helped direct travelers to open spaces, and they opened up a parking area south of the terminal that was free by default – the airport had no way to track vehicles parking there.
“They got a Thanksgiving gift,” Vicari said.
But it’s not a parking lot the airport would prefer to use because it is so far from the terminal and no sidewalk is available for travelers to get to the terminal, he said.
The airport also had to tow nine vehicles that had blocked in other cars. But the airport paid for the tows because the lack of space created the problem, Vicari said.
“We will need to make plans to ensure that we are able to accommodate this level of traffic in the future,” he said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
