Oil Impacts at Minot Airport - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Oil Impacts at Minot Airport

More than one million travelers boarded commercial flights in North Dakota in 2012.

The Minot International Airport led the pack with 224,000 passengers last year, that was 74,000 more people than the previous record set in 2011.

The air space over Minot is especially busy, not only because of commercial and military flights, but the General Aviation terminal has also had a dramatic increase.

Jennifer Thorgramson tells us how oil activity has caused air traffic to soar.

Air travel has taken off in North Dakota.

That demand is reflected in 2012 year end numbers: 1.02 million commercial passengers.

But not far from Minot International Airport, Minot Aero Center is feeling the oil impact economic climb.

...

(Shelley Cole, Minot Aero Center, Line Manager) "Our sales have increased with our fuel. We're pumping a tanker full of jet fuel everyday and sometimes more. It's busy. We keep busy."

Minot Aero Center greets upwards of 50 private planes a day, and a weekly charter planes from Houston and Louisiana deliver a number of now familiar faces.

(Shelley Cole, Minot Aero Center, Line Manager) "We get the same groups of pilots and passengers that we know on a first name basis now because they're here a lot. A lot of them still don't know how to pronounce Minot but they're learning."

...

That's not to down play the activity at the Minot International Airport where they're also learning --- to deal with numbers bigger than the facility.

(J.D. Karhoff, Minot International Airport) "The majority of the airports that have, like last year, 224,000 enplanements, are a lot bigger than us. A lot more square footage, both on the parking side and the square footage."

The parking lot is packed with pick up trucks and plates from around the country.

(J.D. Karhoff, Minot International Airport, Asst. Manager) "Oil has brought a lot more activity to the airport here. Our enplanements last year were about 224,000 which was about triple from four to five years ago. We've had issues with parking, not only car parking, but plane parking. We make do with what we've got, we've got a very small space for the number of passengers. Everybody knew the oil impact was going to come. Things started going in 2010 with our enplanements and it's really jumped since then."

Karhoff says three or four years ago, the airport took care of 21 flights a week.

The Minot International Airport is supporting around 90 flights a week now --- 15 flights a DAY is fairly common.

In Minot, Jennifer Thorgramson, KX News.

Minot International Airport requested 25 million dollars from the state legislature to assist with the construction of a new terminal.

That bill is still in the legislature.