Sioux Falls Regional Airport starts construction on concourse expansion

Construction already has started and officially will kick off this week on a concourse expansion at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport.

“We’re moving forward,” executive director Dan Letellier said. “I think we’re all excited about getting started.”

A groundbreaking will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday.

Initial work already has begun though. A project to enable the airport to operate while its terminal apron is expanded to support the new gate area is wrapping up. The remaining full apron has been bid, and some work could start yet this fall.

The concourse project that has been approved to move forward calls for a net gain of four gates plus a set of restrooms.

“That’s the minimum to get us the additional gates that we need,” Letellier said. “The first phase of that has been put out for bid, and they have contractors on line to start the work.”

Gate one already has been taken out of service with the jet bridge put into storage until the new concourse is done.

The concourse itself will start at the end of the restaurant just off the security checkpoint. The corner of the kitchen will be cut off, and the kitchen will be expanded in the new space, along with relocated walk-in coolers and a larger prep area “for the volume of food they go through and potentially some new food and beverage outlets on the new concourse as well,” Letellier said.

That base package — the new gates and apron — is estimated at $70 million. The rest of the project is estimated to total $20 million to $25 million and will depend on available funding.

Those extra projects include a large atrium seating area that would be located between the current gate three and the new concourse “that would also include room for additional food and beverage retail space in the atrium area and really provide improvement in the flow of passengers of the two concourses, as well as provide more seating,” Letellier said.

That portion is about $17 million to $18 million. The other added projects involve bumping out the hallway after the passenger screening area to create a better path to both concourses and “reduce a pretty big bottleneck we have right now,” Letellier said.

“As you exit the checkpoint, you come right up to people ordering food in the restaurant, and you have cross traffic of people leaving the concourse. So you have three flows of passengers who congregate right there.”

The third added project would be an additional gate for the new concourse that also would include a build-out below for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to clear international flights.

“We would rely on additional federal funding for that to come through, and a couple programs we’re applying for we won’t know the outcome on until later this year,” Letellier said.

Bids for the early portions of the work have come in “quite a bit less than we had been planning,” so it’s possible that could allow for something more to be added, he said.

The goal is to have the new gates ready by March 2027.

Record pace

The market appears to be supporting the need for more space at the airport. July was the airport’s busiest month ever — 10 percent ahead of the same time a year ago — with planes on average 91 percent full.

“That means almost every single flight was full leaving here,” Letellier said. “So really good numbers.”

Going into the year, he said he had hoped to keep pace with records set in 2023 and 2024 despite airlines reporting national drop-offs in advanced bookings. Sioux Falls is sitting at 8 percent ahead of last year’s record through July.

“So we haven’t seen that fortunately slow down here,” Letellier said.

Breaking ground on new gates does support the airport’s continued conversations with airlines about service.

“We’re hopeful in the future we’ll have something to Washington, D.C. Certainly, we’d like to see additional daily service to hubs like Atlanta or a new hub to Salt Lake City or Houston,” Letellier said. “There’s potential for new leisure routes on Allegiant, but that’s more contingent on getting new gates online. We’ll certainly continue those conversations. We have a really good story to tell.”

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