Tri-Cities Airport Named One of North America’s Busiest Small Airports

Photo: Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business

Global aviation database Official Aviation Guide (OAG) has named Tri-Cities Airport (PSC) one of North America’s busiest small airports for 2019. With 518,405 scheduled seats in the last 12 months (June 2018 to May 2019), PSC is the eighth-busiest small airport on the continent. 

OAG categorizes an airport as “small” if it has more than 10,000 departing seats annually but less than .05% of scheduled departing seat capacity in North America. There are 543 such airports in the continent’s aviation system, and PSC is one of the ten busiest. 

Tri-Cities Airport currently has an average of 20 daily flights to Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix-Mesa, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Seattle. The airport’s available seats will rise this summer as Delta begins a fourth nonstop flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul and serves Salt Lake City on a larger plane. Increased seasonal service from Allegiant Airlines will also provide more availability to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. 

“Reports like OAG’s highlight the importance of small airports in our aviation system, and how meaningful it is to be able to travel anywhere in the world from Tri-Cities Airport,” said Buck Taft, Airport Director. “We’re grateful to our airline partners for increasing the opportunities to fly out of Tri-Cities, and to our community for choosing their local airport to begin their journey.” 

According to OAG’s North American Airport Leaders 2019 report released this month, the top five busiest small airports are Hector International Airport in Fargo, North Dakota; Akron-Canton Airport, Cleveland, Ohio; Key West International Airport, Key West, Florida; Billing Logan International, Billings, Montana; and Rick Husband Amarillo International, in Amarillo, Texas. Of the top ten, only one non-US airport made the list: Yellowknife Airport, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

OAG is the world's leading provider of digital flight information, intelligence and analytics for airports, airlines and travel tech companies. OAG collects flight details for more than 900 airlines and over 4,000 airports around the world. More information about the report can be found at oag.com.