You can now fly non-stop from Boise to Dallas. American Airlines opened that service last Thursday. With that, the Boise Airport comes within one flight of its pre-recession high.
Airport director Rebecca Hupp says before the recession hit in 2008 there were 21 non-stop flights in and out of Boise serving nearly three million passengers a year. Hupp says when she came on board in 2012 there were only 15 non-stop flights and passenger numbers were down a couple hundred thousand.
With the new Dallas route, she says there are 20 non-stops and they expect to reach pre-recession head counts this year. But Hupp says the direct flights offered now are different from the ones that were lost.
“Previously we had service to smaller connecting points like Missoula, Billings, I think even Pocatello,” Hupp says. “But today we’re connecting to hubs like Houston and Dallas, and San Francisco, Portland, Chicago. All the major hubs in the West and Midwest are all served from the Boise airport.”
But Hupp says one of the airport’s major priorities remains undone, a nonstop flight to the East Coast. She says she's still trying to convince airlines to create a service to Atlanta. But even offering a million dollar incentive obtained from a federal grant, there are still no takers.
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