Over 1.57 million passengers travel through Montana’s busiest airport
BOZEMAN YELLOWSTONE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
BOZEMAN — Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport (BZN) handled 1,573,860 passengers during 2019. This is an increase of 231,570 passengers (17.3%) compared to 2018 and is the tenth consecutive year of record-breaking passenger traffic. Annual passenger traffic has more than doubled over the past 10 years and accounts for a third of all airline passengers traveling to and from Montana.
During 2019, Allegiant added summer seasonal non-stop service to Los Angeles (LAX). United increased summer and winter seasonal service to Houston (IAH) from weekends to daily and Delta expanded Seattle/Tacoma service from Saturdays summer and winter to daily year-round on December 21st. In 2020, BZN will add its newest non-stop destination when American begins summer Saturday service to Philadelphia. American will also add daily summer service to Los Angeles and summer Saturday service to New York’s LaGuardia airport. In May, Alaska Airlines will up-gauge two of their four daily non-stops to Seattle/Tacoma with mainline A319/A320 aircraft. In June, Sun Country Airlines will become BZN’s eighth airline brand when they begin summer seasonal non-stop service to Minneapolis/St. Paul. On July 6th, Delta will increase Atlanta non-stop service to daily year-round making BZN the smallest market in the western U.S. with daily year-round service to the world’s largest hub airport.
The Air Traffic Control Tower handled an all-time record 97,867 aircraft operations during the year, up 8.1%. Business aviation operations increased 35.0% to 11,868. General aviation accounts for 68% of aircraft operations, scheduled passenger and cargo airline service accounts for approximately 20% with business aviation accounting for the remaining 12%. There were 126 general aviation international arrivals handled at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office at BZN during the year.
BZN was also busy with several construction projects in 2019. During the year, BZN opened a new 1,100 stall multi-use parking garage and began construction of a four-gate terminal concourse expansion. In addition, nineteen new private hangars were under construction at the airport and Central Valley Fire District opened their new fire station on leased airport land. BZN is the eighth busiest airport in the 7-state Northwest Region of the country (region including Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington) and the 107th busiest airport in the nation in terms of passengers.
Passenger totals in and out by airline brand in 2019 were:
- Delta Air Lines – 545,668
- United Airlines – 538,984
- Alaska Airlines – 186,386
- American Airlines – 149,753
- Allegiant Air – 73,187
- Frontier Airlines – 57,849
- JetBlue – 15,415
- Chartered Airline Flights – 6,618
