Humboldt’s Airport Expands Flight Service

The airport’s three new airline services.

The county’s main airport has expanded flight services, and an aviation industry consultant says the facility is “setting new records” of growth.

Progress of the California Redwood Coast–Humboldt County Airport was updated at the Tuesday, March 10 Board of Supervisors meeting by Jack Penning of the Volaire Aviation consulting firm.

He had good news to talk about, as Breeze Airways began its new service to Las Vegas the day after the meeting.

The day after that, Breeze launched its service to Burbank.

And on April 11, Alaska Airlines will return to Humboldt County with service to Seattle and “every day service linking us around the world on the Alaska network,” Penning said.

Graph showing county airport growth.

He described the airport news as “very, very positive” and said “the narrative is completely changed, I feel, about the airport system and the improvements over the last decade have been noticeable.”

Starting three new services in the space of a month is “unheard of for an airport of our size,” he continued.

The new flights add to the airport’s current services to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Denver.

Penning said the new services will add 12 departures a week to the airport, bringing its number of weekly departures up to 54, with flight connections to “the entire world.”

With a 38 percent increase in passenger seats, Penning said the airport’s growth is unprecedented.

“We’re setting new records,” he continued. “The most recent vetted data that we have is for the third quarter of last year and we had 273,000 passengers use our airport. We average essentially almost 400 people a day get on planes at our airport – 400 a day.”

The new airline services will bring the daily tally to 600, he said, which is “incredible with an airport of our size,” and there’s been 80 percent growth since the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

“That’s huge, that does not happen,” Penning said. “We’re one of the fastest-growing small community airports in the country.”

Penning also highlighted the airport’s economic contribution of 121 jobs with a $7 million annual payroll.

He said the facility transported 135,000 visitors to Humboldt County in 2024, representing $51 million in visitor spending and supporting 585 visitor-related jobs.

Penning concluded by saying use of the airport supports “our opportunities moving forward with the carriers that we have and with potentially new carriers.”

The upbeat news was underscored during a public comment period by Gregg Foster of the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission (RREDC), who was a key member of the team rallying for airline services for many years.

“Over 20 years of work in air service development is paying off and I want to thank the county for being a partner with RREDC until 2022 on that project,” he said. “And we got a lot of support and good collaboration.”

Support came from the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Humboldt Lodging Alliance and “a lot of private entities that donated time and money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, to the work that we were trying to do in terms of getting new airlines in here and new destinations,” Foster continued.

Supervisor Natalie Arroyo encouraged residents to talk about “the benefits of flying out of our airport” and said that “on-time performance” has improved, with ticket costs being “pretty competitive now.”

Earlier: A New Breeze Blows Into Humboldt County as Low-Cost Carrier Makes Its Debut at ACV