August/September Business View Magazine

140 141 and by 1967, we came into the jet age, with Northwest bringing the first jets here, as did our second airline, Frontier. They provided south- bound service, while Northwest was east/west service. That started our first big growth period. We continued to grow relatively steadily over the next several years into about the mid-1970s, when Big Sky Ski Resort opened, and created ex- posure of the Bozeman area, starting a significant growth trend from that point forward.” Today, BZN is served by seven major commer- cial carriers: Alaska, Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, and United. “Out of 450 com- mercial airline airports in the country, we’re 108 in the nation,” says Sprenger. “So we have a very significant airline component.We’ll handle about 1.35 million passengers this year.” BZN also has a cargo component –Corporate Air, operating on behalf of FedEx, and Alpine Air Express, operat- ing on behalf of UPS. There is also a very signifi- cant general aviation presence at BZN. “We have around 350-based general aviation aircraft here and about 160 hangars on the field,” Sprenger adds. “We also have a very busy flight school that’s part of Gallatin College, which is affiliated with Montana State University.” BZN is owned by the Gallatin Airport Authority, and, according to Sprenger, the Airport gener- ates all of its own operating revenue. “We are absolutely locally self-sufficient,” he states. “We have not received any tax dollars from the state, or from our county, for 30 years. Much of this is because our growth over this time frame has been extraordinarily steady. In fact, if you go BOZEMAN YELLOWSTONE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT back to 1972, we’ve only had six down years in that entire time frame, and those down years can be pinpointed to specific situations, such as the professional air traffic controllers’ strike, or a Northwest Airlines strike.We had a little bit of an impact back in 1988, with the Yellowstone fires, and, more recently, the simultaneous bank- ruptcies of Northwest and Delta Airlines in 2005. That had some impact because they were our two largest carriers, but we recovered within the year. And then, right after that, of course, the economy in 2008-2009 had a dip and most airports in the country were down double-digits.We were down about two percent and that was for one year. Since that point, we’ve been growing at about a six-and-a-half to eight percent rate. In the past two years, it’s closer to nine percent.” Sprenger elaborates on BZN’s competitive ad- vantages as compared to several other airports in the area: “As one of the major airports that serve Yellowstone National Park, we certainly compete against other airports in the region for passen- gers that are ultimately going to Yellowstone,” he notes. “There are many airports, even includ- ing Salt Lake City that we’re competing against – Jackson Hole, Billings, Cody,West Yellowstone, Idaho Falls. Our strength is we’re a year-round air- port –West Yellowstone is not.We also have no constraints. Jackson Hole Airport is in a controlled valley inside Grand Teton National Park and so they have noise and operational limitations that we don’t have.We’re also the closest airport to two separate entrances to Yellowstone National Park, so we have some inherent advantages in terms of our operational and geographic situa- tions.” Sprenger adds that BZN is also the least expen- sive facility in the region. “One of the things that