Peak tourism season in the Black Hills is rolling, and that means busy times at Rapid City Regional. So busy in fact, the airport just broke its six-month record.
In total, the airport reports well over 357,000 total passengers in 2024 to date, including both arrivals and departures. That’s an increase of more than 20% over this time last year.
“We kind of get a good baseline of what’s happening in the first half of the year by the local, pent-up demand for traveling and the additional seats available, and the market," said airport executive director Patrick Dame. "We expect to see more of the same in the second half, more of that will be tourism based, but based on the first half of the year we think its fantastic to see that local growth.”
Dame said it reflects growing demand for Rapid City as a home and a tourism destination.
“We’ve had a change from regional jets to mainline jets, so going from a 50-seat to a 150 or 180-seat Boeing 737-type aircraft," Dame said. "With more seats available, there’s going to be more seats available coming into tourism as well. We see going forward anywhere from 20-30% increase in seats through the tourism season.”
And that growth has reached Rapid City Regional.
“All the way up to pre-COVID times we were growing from basically 2016 through 2019 pretty aggressively," Dame said. "We had a dip a little bit during COVID, but now we’re hitting the mark where if you were to draw a line on the increase we were seeing pre-COVID and follow that same exponential growth, we’re hitting that amount this year.”
Last month alone, 44,000 passengers departed from Rapid City Regional, and 48,000 arrived, continuing the growth trend seen over the year.