The ski resorts near Gunnison and Crested Butte, Colorado, are so close to Aspen, you’d think the area wouldn’t need its own airport. Their glitzier neighbor is just 48 miles north as the crow flies, though that’s roughly 150 miles by road. But people flocking to Crested Butte’s laid-back town, extreme ski slopes and epic mountain biking have a new reason to bypass farther-away Aspen: the destination’s gleaming new airport, which debuted in January 2023.
Not only is the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport terminal easy to get across quickly, at just 40,000 square feet, it’s also heated and cooled with geothermal energy and uses triple glazed windows to keep travelers warm in a town known to be one of the coldest places in the US. And Crested Butte isn’t the only small town airport receiving an upgrade. All across the U.
S., at least a dozen small and medium-size facilities are being renovated and, in some cases, entirely rebuilt — typically on budgets that stretch eight and nine figures. That contradicts a long-held belief among aviation industry pros that these regional facilities were destined to gather dust and die out.
Indeed during the pandemic, smaller U.S. airports fell out of favor.
With business travel reduced to virtually nothing, airlines cut service to focus on more profitable leisure routes between large hubs. Planned facility improvements were also put on hold. Even as those issues faded, severe pilot shortages forced major airlines to cut bac.