St. George • Despite its small size and distant location a dozen miles south of downtown St. George, the city’s airport garners high marks from many users for its aesthetics, parking and ease of access.
Randy Hales, CEO of Next Level Apparel, said St. George Regional Airport is easily accessible and he would use it more if it had a direct flight to the Los Angeles area, where his business is headquartered.
For physician Donna Dizon-Townson, who divides her time between Sandy and Ivins and either flies commercial or pilots her Cessna 172, St. George’s airport fits squarely in the Goldilocks Zone — “just the right size,” she said.
Retired nursing consultant Barb Pridie prefers flying in and out of St. George rather than making the 260-mile round trip to Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, even if it costs a little bit more.
“I never once had a bad experience at St. George’s airport,” the Ivins resident said. “It’s beautiful, efficient and easy to use. The parking is good, and it’s a quick shot home.”
In the 2021 Federal Aviation Administration rankings of the nation’s top 500 airports, St. George placed 190th. Salt Lake City International Airport, which ranked 20th, was the only Utah airport to rank higher.
And traffic at the St. George’s airport has ballooned from almost 136,816 passengers in 2011, its first year of operation, to more than 275,000 last year.
To keep pace, city officials are teaming up with state lawmakers to ask the Legislature for $10 million to fund upgrades that will help the airport rise to the challenge posed by the additional traffic spurred by the St. George metro area’s rapid growth.
Unlike other Utah airports to that received state money, city officials say, St. George’s airport was built and improved with city, county and FAA funds.
“We haven’t received funding directly from the state before,” said Shawn Guzman, director of government affairs for St. George. “We’ve done it on our own. We’re now saying we need some help because our passenger traffic is going up.”
Guzman joined Reps. Walt Brooks, R-St. George, and Joseph Ellison, R-Toquerville, in late January to pitch the request to the Legislature’s Infrastructure and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee.
If approved, up to $3 million would be used to remodel and expand the terminal’s secure area where passengers wait to board their flights after clearing the Transportation Security Agency checks. Currently, the secure area is about 10,000 square feet and can accommodate about 270 people, the maximum allowed by fire codes.
Airport manager Richard Stehmeier said the area often threatens to exceed capacity, especially if there is a flight delay and passengers merge with those awaiting later flights. The upgrade would join the existing secure area on the ground floor with what is now a second-floor viewing area, adding another 70 to 100 seats and bumping up the square footage of the area by 4,500 to 6,000 square feet.
Another estimated $3 million would be used to purchase a combined 53 acres on two tracts of land — 35 acres owned by Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, better known as SITLA, adjacent to the north part of the airport, and another 18 acres that are privately owned. The additional land would provide the 1,205-acre airport with an additional buffer to ward off potential encroachment from future development.
Third on the airport’s to-do list is $1 million to pay for a siting and environmental study for an airport terminal, the construction of which would cost an estimated $12 to $15 million. Stehmeier said the airport was recently accepted into the FAA’s Contract Tower Program, which means if the city can come up with funds to build the tower within five years, the federal agency will operate and staff it at no cost to the city.
Rep. Brooks said a tower would enhance public safety by enabling airport officials to better control the increasing number of private and commercial flights arriving and departing from St. George.
“Mixing general aviation with as many commercial flights that are coming in can raise the risk factor,” he said. “When you’re flying in the air, you don’t really get a do-over if you crash.”
Finally, the city is asking the Legislature for another $2.5 million or more to fund the installation of asphalt, curb, gutter and sidewalks and other infrastructure on Airport Parkway, which parallels the runway and portions of which are currently unpaved.
As lofty as their hopes for state funds are, St. George leaders say they are not taking it for granted they will get the money. While the Legislature has $2 billion in extra money to spend this year, lawmakers have been inundated with requests totaling $3.2 billion.
“There are more hands out than ever before because we have extra money,” Brooks noted, adding the outcome won’t likely be known until the Legislature’s Executive Appropriations Committee wraps up prioritizing all the appropriation requests in several weeks.
Still, Brooks, Guzman and others have reasons for optimism. For starters, state money has been awarded to other airports in the state. They further note that St. George’s airport is Utah’s second-busiest. Another factor is the airport’s large economic footprint.
St. George Regional Airport’s annual economic impact is roughly $178 million. It also provides 1,936 jobs and generates $9.5 million in state and local taxes each year, according to a 2021 Utah Aviation Development Economic Impact Study. Also playing into the calculation is that St. George is now seen as a destination of choice rather than a place of second or last resort.
“Traditionally, people coming to southern Utah would fly into Vegas and stay there a few days to take advantage of the kind of entertainment it offers,” Guzman said. “But more and more, the younger generation seems to want to bypass Vegas and come here so they can start biking, hiking and touring Zion National Park and other places in Utah.”
For all it offers, though, the airport has some notable deficiencies. Currently, the airport has regional carrier SkyWest and three airlines — Delta, United and American — offering direct flights to Denver, Dallas, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City. But it dropped its direct United flights to Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stehmeier said the airport has been unable to recover the route due to a pilot shortage, airlines’ caution about expanding service and fewer Asian tourists coming to visit Utah’s national parks.
Hales hopes that changes — not only for him but also for his business. He wanted to have an off-site retreat in St. George for members of his executive team but recently opted instead to host it in Orange County due to the flight situation.
“It’s crazy that there’s no direct flight to the largest market in the western United States,” he said.
Conversely, John Haddow, who used to fly United out of St. George to Denver when he was commuting to work in Washington, D.C., loves the southern Utah airport, especially the service. He recalls inserting his ticket and credit card into a payment machine one night to exit the parking lot at St. George. Unlike the machine in the D.C. airport he frequented, the one in St. George required the ticket and the card to be inserted separately. Unfortunately, it was too dark at 9:30 that night for him to realize his mistake.
“It ate my credit card and I could not exit …,” he said. “I went into the airport, found someone, and he came out, opened up the machine and returned my card to me. That would never have happened at some larger airports.”
