More travelers than ever are flying into Southwest Colorado through the Durango-La Plata County Airport.
According to a news release from the city of Durango, the airport saw 563,009 travelers in 2025, a 13% increase compared with 2024. Tony Vicari, director of aviation at the airport, said 2025 was 40% higher than pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, meaning more people are flying into the airport than any point in the past 25 years.
“We’ve now had three consecutive years of record-breaking growth – 2023, 2024 and 2025 – which cumulatively represent the single most-sharp growth period we’ve seen in the last 25 years,” Vicari said. “The market has undeniably grown in terms of demand for air service here in Southwest Colorado.”
Just why the airport is seeing that growth is more of a chicken-and-egg question, Vicari said. For one, airlines are able to supply more seats for passengers looking to come to Southwest Colorado.
“The passenger traffic at the airport can’t grow if there aren’t seats to fill effectively,” he said.
According to the release, airline seat capacity was up 10% from 2024. That is largely a result of larger aircraft serving the airport, Vicari said.
United Airlines was the market share leader at DRO in 2025, carrying 57% of all passengers, the release said. American Airlines carried the remaining 43%. Load factors – or the percentage of seats sold – finished the year at 83%, the highest figure in at least 15 years at DRO.
Another reason Vicari pointed to is airlines are flying more flights to and from major hubs like Dallas and Denver. Because of that, the airport has seen that more residents traveling out of Durango have opted to fly from their local airport rather than a larger regional airport like Albuquerque, he said.
“I think more and more people are recognizing the convenience of the airport that is 20 minutes outside of Durango, centrally located in La Plata County, and has robust connectivity through Denver, Dallas and Phoenix – three major hubs with connections to pretty much everywhere in the world thereafter,” he said.
That mix of more people flying in and out of Durango and more seat availability on flights has helped steadily reduce the cost of flights from the airport, Vicari said.
“The number of seats available has increased, and so that creates more options for travelers,” he said. “As seats are added, we generally see that there’s a little bit of downward pressure on airfares. We’ve seen our average airfare in the market decrease not rapidly but steadily over the last two years. That certainly is a big incentive for folks to use our airport as opposed to looking at other options.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
