Runaway Costs Have Wyoming’s Small Airports Facing Financial Turbulence

It’s not all smooth flying for Wyoming’s regional airports. There’s financial turbulence ahead, in particular for the Riverton, Rock Springs, Gillette and Sheridan airports.

The troubles are caused by a variety of factors coming together all at once, creating a perfect storm that is jeopardizing airline services for those communities.

Those four communities took a proactive step in 2019 — just ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic — to negotiate airline services more directly. By creating a capacity purchase agreement (CPA) with SkyWest, they were able to lower the overall cost of service, while dramatically improving reliability for their communities.

The agreement worked by guaranteeing airlines a minimum number of seats for providing the air service. The communities pay for however many of those minimum guaranteed seats aren’t filled by actual passengers at the rate of 40%, while the state agreed to cover the remaining 60%.

At the time, this approach not only gave those areas better services than they had at lower overall costs than before, but it’s also something Wyoming Air Service Development Program Manager Mariah Johnson believes was key to saving those airport services following the pandemic.

“Between the start of the pandemic and 2023, fall of 2023, there were 72 different stations or airports around the country that lost service from a legacy airline,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “A lot of those were communities similar in size to the communities we have and some were even larger.

“So, this really helped us maintain and sustain that air service at a time when we could have easily lost it.”

But runaway inflation after the pandemic has doubled costs of airline seats, and thus the community match. It’s also drained the money set aside for the state match much faster than anticipated, and the state fund is expected to run dry by June 2026.

If the state won’t put more money into the fund during the next legislative budget session, those four communities could lose air services altogether — particularly since federal legislation prohibits airports that have left the Essential Air Services program from returning.

Key To Economic Development

Riverton economic developer Kevin Kershisnik, who is the executive director of IDEA Inc., said reliable airport service is something Riverton and the areas he serves can’t afford to lose.

He recalls the situation prior to 2019. Air service was so unreliable, he lost out on a million-dollar contract because the airline ultimately couldn’t provide services when it had said it would.

He also had a manufacturer tell him point-blank that it was leaving Riverton because of the situation.

“The Central Wyoming Regional Airport in Riverton’s economic impact is huge,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It is at least $21 million per annum.”

That figure is probably lowballing the actual amount, Kershisnik added. The study was conducted a few years ago, and it is one of the things being updated ahead of the 2026 legislative session.

“I don’t know how to replace that $21 million in economic impact without the airport,” Kershisnik said. “If you look at it just strictly from a financial standpoint, it’s, ‘OK, should the community pay $1.6 million to receive $21 million in economic impact?’ Me, being an economic developer, of course I’m going to say, ‘Yes, we need to keep doing that.’”

But Kershisnik knows asking for additional monetary commitments from Fremont County and its communities right now is particularly tough. Municipalities and counties are facing significant budget cuts in light of property tax reductions approved by Wyoming legislators during the most recent session.

“The cuts are significant,” Kershisnik said. “I heard it was north of a couple million bucks on the annual budget that they’re going to get hit with because of the property tax cut.”

Kershisnik was even told during one meeting that commissioners would be deciding “whether we’re going to have an ambulance coming to your house to take you to the hospital or we’re going to have an airplane flying overhead.”

“That’s what they told me verbatim, in a public meeting,” Kershisnik said. “So, there’s some real tough decision for the county and the citizens of Fremont County to make coming up.”

Rock Springs Air Supports Wyoming’s Largest Exporter

Devon Brubaker, airport director for Rock Springs, said the problems for small regional airports have been building for a while, and aren’t just an issue in Wyoming.

“The economics of air service have shifted exponentially,” he said. “The cost of flight crews, the cost of maintenance, the cost of aircraft operation, have all increased exponentially. That’s put pressure on the economics for each of the communities that are part of the capacity purchase agreement, but it’s not just us. It’s every small community across the country.”

The issue with runaway costs started before the pandemic, he added, and had already caused some communities larger than Rock Springs to lose their air services.

In Rock Springs, airport services support some of the state’s most important industries, Brubaker added, including the trona industry.

“That’s based here in Sweetwater County and it’s billions and billions of dollars of economic impact,” he said. “Wyoming’s largest export is trona and so without commercial air service in our community, we would leave a global industry disconnected from the rest of the world.”

Brubaker credited the 2019 CPA  with helping Rock Springs keep its air service, despite some larger communities losing theirs during the pandemic. 

It’s Been A Roller Coaster Ride

The post-pandemic environment, though, has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the airline services sector. And that’s been putting even more pressure on things. 

“It’s creating a situation that no matter which way we turn as an industry there’s a new pressure,” Brubaker said. “That started before the pandemic with an impending pilot shortage. And then the pandemic hit and the pilot shortage went away momentarily, before rearing back even stronger than before. 

“Then we were dealing with an industry that couldn’t get aircraft deliveries to meet growing demand,” he continued. “Now we’re in a position where international demand is down considerably, and government travel demand is down significantly. So, needless to say, there’s a lot of pressure facing air services as a whole.”

While Brubaker believes the worst of runaway costs is behind the airline services sector, he doesn’t foresee decreased costs any time soon.

“That means if we want to continue to have this critical connectivity for our industries, for our quality of life, for workforce and for health care access and so forth, we’re going to need to make a renewed commitment,” he said. “Both in our local communities and at the state level, to ensure the service stays for the long-term.”

Sheridan’s Success Story

Airport service in Sheridan has seen a steady rise, said Robert Gill, Sheridan’s airport manager, and he credits the CPA with getting things where they needed to be.

“Back in 2019, we were struggling to get 10,000 enplanements,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And last year, Sheridan was over 30,000. So, we are getting more people moved. The seats are getting filled.”

Those rising numbers of passengers have helped take the top off of some of Sheridan’s minimum guaranteed reservations. That’s helping to keep their match affordable for now.

But if the state were unable to recapitalize its matching fund, that would be a dramatic change to the overall equation for Sheridan County, which, like Fremont, Sweetwater, and most Wyoming counties across the state, are all having to tighten their budgets.

Gill is hopeful that the forthcoming economic development study in 2026 will show the value of the CPA program and help make the case for its recapitalization. 

Johnson, meanwhile, believes the study can help show how close Wyoming’s smaller airports are to passenger numbers that could attract a major carrier to come to the table. If, that is, the program can last long enough to get there.

“We’ve had several airports who have lowered their cost per seat significantly,” Johnson said. “And I do believe we have a chance of a major carrier coming in and taking over the route without needing the kind of guarantee in place that we have now.

“But we have to be able to prove that the market has the participation. We can’t just flip a switch and have it happen overnight.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.