Provo’s tiny, budget-friendly airport is the ‘fastest growing’ in the U.S. — and bracing to get even bigger

Provo • Provo’s little airport has seen enormous growth since its last renovation, and it seems poised to double in size thanks to millions promised by the county.

Utah County has pledged $78 million — $19.5 million up front, and $3.9 million per year for the next 15 years — to build six additional gates to accommodate the county’s growing population and the throngs of others who seem increasingly eager to eschew a road trip in favor of a cheap flights to, as the Provo Airport extols, basically anywhere in the world (so long as you’re OK with a connecting flight).

Since 2020, the airport’s demand has ballooned, surging from 77,217 “enplanements” (the number of people boarding a plane) up to 448,972 last year — a 481% increase. That makes Provo “the fastest growing commercial airport in the entire country,” said Brian Torgersen, Provo Airport’s director.

Since this number only captures people boarding planes, the total number of passengers last year is actually about two times that: nearly 900,000 people, all seated on roughly 800 inbound and outbound flights

On a graph, that looks like a gradual ascent that suddenly juts upward starting in 2022, when the airport’s new terminal opened — as of last year, already hitting the passenger boarding projections officials expected to reach in 2035. In hiking parlance, it’s like walking straight up the Y trail without using the switchbacks.

No matter who you ask, this growth is striking. To Torgersen and other local officials, the chart shows the need for more gates.

The airport is already using a temporary outdoor gate to accommodate the flights it has, nodding to the relative absurdity of the situation with a collection of cheeky signs, alluding to it as the mythical “platform 9¾” of Harry Potter fame. One sign pokes fun at Salt Lake City’s airport, promising the walk is “Still closer than concourse B.”

Plus, if you look at the tiptop of the chart, Torgersen said, “enplanements” do begin to level off. If the airport wants to keep up with demand, and be prepared for increased travel around the 2034 winter Olympics, he and other officials say it’s time to expand.

But some state lawmakers this month, when looking at the same chart, instead saw symptoms of unhealthy growth — a too-rapid ascent that reminded them of tech unicorns that grew faster and faster until their bottoms dropped out.

Both Sen. Kathleen Riebe, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. Dan McCay issued warning at a Transportation and Infrastructure Appropriations Subcommittee meeting Feb. 3, worrying that the airport was giving its budget airlines too lucrative of deals, with taxpayers fronting the cost.

“I would just be concerned,” McCay said, “from a business model standpoint, when you see this type of growth, there isn’t a cliff ahead.”

Torgersen denied this, asserting that the city charges airlines a fair price — including an introductory waiver of fees — to add new routes in and out of Provo. The growth, he said, is both because more people are choosing to fly, and because the population in the airport’s “catchment” area (essentially where they hope to get passengers from) keeps growing.

At that same meeting, Republican Sen. Keven Stratton offered another lens: “This graph that we see here, let’s put it in context, recognizing that that’s very similar to the growth graph of Utah County — the extreme growth that is taking place there.”

Impacts of growth

Even with all those new passengers, Provo’s airport still feels cozy. The walk from paid parking to the terminal is short — shorter than the walk between Salt Lake City’s two concourses — and security screenings move quickly. A passenger can see every gate from whichever seat they choose in the terminal.

Torgersen said the airport has no ambitions of growing so large it ever competes with Salt Lake City’s. With a goal of 10 gates — three tacked on to both the north and south side of its current terminal — that’s still just a fraction of Salt Lake City International Airport’s 70 or so (with about a dozen more on the way).

Provo’s model has always been based around so-called budget airlines, beginning with Frontier and since transitioning to deals with Allegiant Air and Breeze Airways. It most recently lured American Airlines, which now offers flights from Provo to Phoenix and Dallas.

Mike Johnson has been flying in and out of the Provo airport for trips to Orange County at least once a month for the last 15 or so months.

Johnson, who lives in Sandy, says the math works better flying out of Provo for nearly every calculation.

For one, his flight out of Provo is often much cheaper. On Feb. 13, he and his wife flew to Orange County for $245 a piece. The same flight out of Salt Lake City would have cost around $800.

It helps, too, that Johnson doesn’t buy a checked bag or choose a seat — all ways that keep budget airlines at budget prices, Torgersen said.

Flying out of Provo also takes less time, even though Johnson’s house is technically closer to Salt Lake City International Airport.

To catch an 8:30 a.m. flight out of Provo, Johnson said he leaves his house at 7 a.m., and gets to the gate by 7:50 a.m. He said he would have left his house 30 minutes earlier to make an 8:30 a.m. flight in Salt Lake City, once he accounts for time to park, take a shuttle and get through security.

Johnson said he has noticed the uptick in Provo passengers. There’s more people and more cars in the parking lot, especially on holiday weekends. Things take just a little bit longer — like an eight-minute trek to his gate, instead of five. It’s a small change, but a change nonetheless. With more changes on the way.

“More flights, you might have lines to security,” he said, “and then a little secret will be gone.”

Provo’s City Council would still need to approve the deal with Utah County. Torgersen expects city leaders to discuss the proposal at a council meeting later this month.

“It should be a slam dunk, obviously,” he said, “but there are some questions that our council has that we’re going to do our best to answer.”

Among them, Torgersen said: Will Utah County keep growing?

Between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024, alone, it was still the county that saw the most growth in Utah, adding nearly 22,000 residents and accounting for more than 43% of the state’s growth, according to a report released Feb. 13 from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

And more data that experts point to seems to suggest it will keep expanding, though it may not remain the fastest growing in the nation like it was during the last census, Torgersen said.

Growing too fast?

When Torgersen and Provo Deputy Mayor Isaac Paxman made their case for the state to pledge $4.5 million to airport’s planned expansion earlier this month, they did not expect so much scrutiny of the airport’s operations, Torgersen said.

Riebe wondered if taxpayers — not ticket-buyers — were absorbing the cost of growth, noting Provo Airport seemed to require less fees from its airlines than Salt Lake City’s airport. She hoped to transfer more of the cost back to airlines.

“I share her concern,” McCay said. “When you socialize the cost and privatize the benefit, you get market disruption like this, for example. So this is an unhealthy growth pattern based on the projections.”

“Does it concern you to hear bipartisan concerns, or questions to look to Salt Lake for answers?” he continued. “If it doesn’t, it should.”

It’s true that Provo Airport has waived some fees for airlines when they open new routes, but Torgersen said it’s a common industry practice, called a carrier incentive program, that has an end date — typically two years after the route begins.

“At these initial phases,” Paxman told lawmakers, “getting the airlines in has been key and and it’s been paying off in amazing ways.”

As of Feb. 13, Torgersen said seven of the airport’s 19 routes were paying reduced fees as part of the incentive program. One of those routes will age out next week. By June, he said, there would only be five routes with reduced fees.

“When they start a route, it’s an expensive proposition, right? With really no guarantee of success. It could flop, or it could be wildly successful. ... And so what an incentive does is it is it allows the airport to waive certain fees to minimize that risk,” Torgersen said.

Once those fees are gone, Torgersen said customers shouldn’t expect ticket prices to increase, since the airlines will likely be flying fuller planes on these more mature routes, and recouping the cost of the fees that way.

Torgersen added that there are other reasons prices may fluctuate — jet fuel prices, salaries for a shrinking number of pilots, and yes, he admitted, facility costs.

A bigger facility means higher utility costs, higher staffer costs, more de-icing operations, and so on.

Despite all that, Torgersen said he hoped to keep customer prices low. It’s the airport’s foundational business model, after all.

“We realize that in order for us to be attractive next to a Salt Lake,” he said, “our costs have got to be lower.”

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