Southwest Signals Commitment To DIA With New Hangar
With the completion of its new hangar at Denver International Airport, Southwest Airlines has further cemented its commitment to the airport as passenger traffic continues to climb annually and the city seeks to grow its presence on a national and international stage.
Southwest’s $100M, 130K SF hangar holds three Boeing 737s inside, with room for eight more outside, according to reporting from the Denver Business Journal.
A Southwest executive said that having the hangar available for airplane maintenance is especially important during Colorado’s winters when blowing snow and ice on the plains where DIA sits can prohibit working outside.
About 100 Southwest technical operations employees will also work at the hangar. The airline only operates a few hangars across the country, with most of them in large, internationally connected markets like Chicago, Orlando and Atlanta, which is home to the busiest airport in the U.S.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock referred to the hangar’s presence in Denver as “a big effin’ deal,” during a ribbon-cutting for the new facility.
Southwest has been anything but coy about its interest in growing its footprint at DIA. The Dallas-based carrier has leased 24 gates at DIA for years, but with the recent gate expansion project at DIA, Southwest asked for and was given 16 of the 39 new gates, bringing its total to 40.
These moves demonstrate Southwest’s desire to grow along with DIA as the airport expands in its third decade of operation.
Denver’s airport, which opened in 1995 as a replacement for Stapleton International Airport, is undergoing a massive renovation that will relocate the Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, renovate the Jeppesen Terminal and make many other improvements beyond the separate gate expansion project.
Earlier this year, the Denver City Council approved a funding and timeline extension that brings the project’s total cost to $2.1B, with final completion anticipated in 2028.
These improvements are aimed at helping Denver and its airport retain and grow its standing as a destination for both leisure and business travel among domestic and international travelers alike. Since its opening, DIA has been touted by economic development professionals as a connector to the rest of the world for a smaller, inland city that has historically been overlooked in favor of denser coastal cities.
Denver’s star has risen in the last decade, and DIA is considered a major reason. The number of direct international flights from DIA has grown significantly, with perhaps the biggest win coming in 2013 with the inaugural direct flight to Tokyo, resulting from years of effort on the part of city officials. Since then, direct flights to Paris, Munich and London have been added, among others.
Beyond its purpose as an economic development tool, DIA simply needs more space for its growing passenger count.
Data from Airports Council International show that DIA was the third-busiest airport in the world in the first half of 2021, although those numbers are skewed by pandemic-related travel restrictions.
But before the pandemic, DIA consistently ranked in the top 10 busiest airports in the world and No. 5 or No. 6 in the U.S. In 2019, the airport notched a record number of passengers at nearly 70 million.
Southwest wants to capitalize on this growth and gets its share of the pie, with DIA targeting a goal of 100 million annual passengers in the next few years.
