Sioux Falls airport reports more seats available in 2026, provides updates on construction, C-store development

Feb. 2, 2026

The Sioux Falls Regional Airport set another record for passenger traffic in 2025, and airport officials are still hopeful additional funding will allow for a broader concourse expansion project.

About 1.5 million passengers flew in or out of the airport last year, an increase of 6 percent over the record set in 2024.

“That was encouraging to see,” executive director Dan Letellier said. “We didn’t really expect but hoped we’d have an increase over 2024 and certainly weren’t expecting 6 percent.”

December came in 3 percent over the prior year despite some challenging weather around the holidays.

For the first five months of this year, available seats are up, much of it driven by American Airlines.

“The increase here we’re seeing is driven by their overall growth in Chicago, trying to reestablish their presence there, so we’re adding a fourth round-trip flight, and those would be on a little larger regional jet,” Letellier said. “And they continue to have two trips a day to their hub in Phoenix, so that’s boosting some service.”

Allegiant Air will be increasing its schedule this month and in March as it typically does seasonally, with more flights to the Phoenix area, as well as Las Vegas and Fort Lauderdale and Punta Gorda in Florida. The airline’s recently announced merger with Sun Country Airlines also could benefit Sioux Falls, assuming it’s completed, Letellier said.

“Hopefully, that will provide some additional travel opportunities for our travelers,” he said. “We’ve had discussions with Sun County prior to this, especially in the summer months. Allegiant is discontinuing their seasonal service to Los Angeles … so we’ve had good conversations with Sun Country about replacing that service, as well as other popular summer destinations like San Francisco, Seattle, even Washington, D.C. We’re certainly hopeful.”

The airline was “very interested if we were to move forward with building out our new concourse with an international clearance facility,” he added. “That could accommodate a nonstop from Cancun, so they would be very interested in that, so certainly down the road. I think that’s part of why Allegiant wanted the combination was to more readily jump into the international market Sun Country has developed.”

Constructing the additional gate required for international flights isn’t certain yet. Work is underway on a base project to add a net gain of four domestic gates plus a set of restrooms.

“Hopefully in a couple months, we can give the go-ahead to do the full build-out,” Letellier said. “There’s no additional food or beverage or retail (now); it’s bare bones. But we do have a couple alternates we want to add in that would provide that additional seating area, food and beverage and retail, and would add one more gate, as well as begin the build-out of a federal inspection area … but those are dependent on securing additional federal funding.”

More gates also will pave the way for additional air service.

“Our focus for the last year really has been the concourse project, getting it designed and trying to come up with a funding plan that would get us to the end project we think we need that will allow us to grow well into the future,” Letellier said.

“When your flights are 86 to 88 percent full for the entire year and fares are competitive … the demand is there. People are expected to continue to move into Sioux Falls, and that demand is only going to increase, and airlines see that.”

The airport also is moving ahead with plans to develop 3 acres of airport-owned property at the entrance to the main terminal.

There were three proposals for the site from developers, and the airport selected Freeman-based Stern Co. to work through a potential concept.

“We thought a helpful amenity would be to have not just a standard gas station but more of a travel stop, where if you’re coming to pick someone up, you could stop there and grab a quick sandwich or hang out and get a beverage and watch TV and hop in your car and come over,” Letellier said. “If there’s room to partner with an office building as well, we’re open to that.”

Stern provided some initial plans for how to develop the area and will be meeting with airport officials “to begin the more formal processes of nailing down exactly what the plan would be and the financing and what the revenue-share agreement would be,” Letellier said.

“We’re a lot further down the road than we have been before, and we’re hopeful in the next couple months we can get an exact plan and design laid out for that area.”

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