Travelers wait March 14 outside the terminal at the Santa Fe Regional Airport where construction continues on a terminal expansion and parking lot improvements.
Travelers wait March 14 outside the terminal at the Santa Fe Regional Airport where construction continues on a terminal expansion and parking lot improvements.
United Airlines will begin testing a flight from Santa Fe to Houston starting in March to see if the route could be viable.
The flight will be once a week on Saturdays, and if it proves popular, it could expand into a permanent route with more travel days, said Santa Fe Regional Airport Director James Harris.
There is currently one Texas-bound flight out of Santa Fe — to Dallas — along with flights to Phoenix and Denver.
United operates the Denver route. Harris said officials from the airline reached out to him about the test flight and said they had been interested in a route from Santa Fe to Houston for a while. The route would cut the travel time between the two cities from a 12-plus hour drive to a two-hour direct flight.
The flight will launch after the completion of the Santa Fe airport’s terminal expansion project, which Harris said is on track to be done by the end of January after the need for additional repairs to underground infrastructure pushed back the date several times.
“Right now we’re just maxed out; we don’t have the terminal capacity to host another flight,” he said. “But once the expansion is done, we’ll have room for more flights simultaneously.”
Harris said he hopes the expansion will attract more airlines to come to Santa Fe and add more routes. Popular requests include flights to Los Angeles and Chicago.
City Manager John Blair said at the Nov. 29 City Council meeting the test flight is an indicator the airlines at the airport “are recognizing the work that we’re doing here and the potential for future growth and additional flights.”
The work continues.
Along with the expansion project, Harris said, he recently filed three grant requests to the Federal Aviation Administration for money from the $1 trillion federal infrastructure law passed in 2021. The FAA was given
$15 billion for airport infrastructure and $5 billion for air traffic control upgrades.
Harris is asking for $20 million for further terminal expansion work, $14 million for a new air traffic control tower that has up-to-date equipment and is Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant and $1.5 million for new equipment and heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades for the terminal.
“Most of that stuff has been there since the terminal was built in 1958, and there hasn’t been an upgrade to it in a very long time,” he said.
At a November City Council Finance Committee meeting, councilors praised Harris for his tenacity in seeking funds for the airport.
“I haven’t been keeping count, but it’s been a lot,” Harris said with a laugh when asked how many grants he’s applied for this year.
The airport had one of the largest post-pandemic increases in passenger traffic and is on track to have 200,000 passengers this year, he said in an earlier interview.
“Our flights are full,” Blair said at the meeting. “They’re not flying empty, they’re not flying half-full, they’re at near capacity, if not at capacity, at every flight. There is demand to fly into and out of Santa Fe, which is great.”
