Commercial passenger departures rose 200% at the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport in 2021, compared with the previous year when travel fell dramatically at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A total of 30,721 passengers left on flights from Lewiston in 2021, said Airport Director Michael Isaacs at a Tuesday meeting of the airport authority board. Of those, 3,630 were in December when passenger volume was also 200% higher than December 2020, he said. United’s Lewiston-Denver flights were running 77% full in the last month of the year after debuting in October. Delta’s Lewiston-Salt Lake City flights were at 80% capacity, Isaacs said.
Each airline only had to cancel a single arrival and departure in the last two weeks of December.
In other airport business, the board approved a contract with T-O Engineers for about $200,000 start design work for an upgrade to expand the airport’s capacity for corporate and private hangars. Isaacs said the project is due to demand and that he has fielded six requests from potential tenants.
