Business View Magazine | February 2021

161 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2021 ST . GEORGE REGIONAL A I RPORT amazing year. In 2019 we had had 226,850 passengers. Now the year before we had 277,000, but remember, we were completely shut down for four months.” Then along came January 2020 and it was the best month in airport history. Stehmeier reflects, “It was amazing, we were all set for record flights in February and instead it just sort of flatlined. Then in March came the big tumble. April went down to our lowest passenger count ever in the history of the airport. Our monthly passenger average was between 27 - 30,000. That April saw 2900 passengers. We lost 90% of our passengers and that was a bit dismal. When we look at 2020 as a whole, we are looking at about 180,000 passengers. That is about our 2016 level – so we regressed four years because of the pandemic.” However, the growth had been happening for a reason, and even COVID could not contain it. St. George Regional Airport is a commercial and general aviation airport located just outside the growing city of St. George. As the city has grown, so has the airport. In 2011, there were just over 68,000 enplanements and now it is over 200,000. The city growth is only half of the story, however. The airport growth is also due to location. The City of St. George is tucked into Utah’s picturesque southwestern corner, not far from the state’s border with Arizona and Nevada, and such natural wonders as Zion National Park, Snow Canyon, and the Arizona Strip. According to Stehmeier, “Here in southern Utah, when everyone else was seeing big COVID numbers, we weren’t. The initial recovery was earlier down here. Restaurants opened back up, things were done safely, but there was a lot of freedom. The really interesting thing was that we saw a huge rise in tourism, especially over the summer. Washington County charges a hotel and restaurant tax that goes towards tourism,