By Shannon Lukens.
The 26th Annual Airline Partners Summit wraps up Wednesday, hosted by Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. It’s an annual educational travel industry seminar.
One speaker at the event Tuesday was Tinneal Gerber, the Director of Yampa Valley Regional Airport. She gave an update on the upcoming expansion plans of the airport in Hayden.
“The big news today is that as an airport we are getting really close to completing our design on our terminal area expansion to the west. And with that we are going to be submitting our building permit documents at the end of next week.”
Gerber says they hope to break ground in April. The terminal expansion will be 60,000 more feet which doubles the size of the current terminal. It would take two years, so spring of 2028. (Pictures of the proposed airport expansion are below.)
Construction costs are $69,500,000. The total cost is $86,609,467. The expansion is being paid for with revenue generated by the airport, and not tax funded by Routt County.
Jonas Philipsen is a principal with Gensler. He was with Gerber for the presentation.
Sarah Leonard, CEO of the Steamboat Springs Chamber welcomed the crowd.
Katie Brown, the VP of Brand & Resort Strategy for Steamboat Resort told those at the summit that there are 17 nonstop flights that come into the airport in Hayden on six major airlines. She said, “Steamboat is the friendliest and most welcoming mountain destination on the planet.”
She spoke about The Stockman Legacy 1900 which will be 95 new condos, both hotel and residential, to be built next to the T-Bar.
Bob Stinchcomb is the Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Alterra Mountain Company. He spoke about how Alterra has 19 owned mountain destinations, and 60+ destinations on the Ikon Pass, and Alterra has invested $1 billion in capital improvements.
Rhett Morgan, Director & Andrew Pierini, Director, Ailevon Pacific Aviation Consultants, spoke on the “State of Air Service.”
They said things that were not expected in 2025 were:
- Leisure Slowdown – Tariffs
- Southwest has assigned seats and bag charges now
- Government Shutdown of 43 days which resulted in $1 billion lost every week in U.S. Travel
- ULCC Turmoil (Frontier Group)
Total passenger traffic into Yampa Valley Regional Airport in Hayden in 2025 was 443,643 passengers.
Daily seats went up this year from 845 to 902 which is up 7%.
In 2025, 83% of departures out of Hayden are on mainline aircraft, with 38% of those flights are to Denver.
Of the 17 non-stop flights, Steamboat is second behind the Bozeman-Yellowstone airport, which has 22, when it comes to peer airports. Eagle Vail has 16 flights and Jackson has 13.
The domestic average one-way airfare is $244 on an annual basis out of Hayden.
A panel of three Olympians spoke of their time on the snow, with SSWSC, and at the Olympics. They were Fuzz Feddersen, Ann Battelle, and Johnny Spillane.
