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Recording Secretary reminded commissioners to please state their names when calling a motion and seconding for record purposes. 

December minutes were late in being distributed, vote on approval will occur next month. 

The Airport commission has a new Council liaison, Lori Matthews. She was traveling today, will not be able to join us, but we'll have an introduction next meeting.

December's enplanements were the highest for that month since 2021 and sits at a 20.5% increase from 2023. Overall enplanements for calendar year 2024 were up 7% from the year before; we finished up with 77,507 compared to 72,494 in 2023. This is also our 4^th highest year ever and the highest with a single carrier. Our other top years were 2019, 2021 and 2022, when we had both American Airlines and United Airlines serving the airport.
 
December's operations were the highest for that month since 2018. Operations in 2024 were up 17% from 2023 although, unfortunately, 2023’s numbers may not be complete as we had several months with reduced tower hours due to staffing issues at the air traffic control tower.

December's parking revenue was up 21% from 2023 and was actually the first month in 2024 that exceeded the numbers for 2023. This was also our first full year since the paid parking system was implemented and our total revenue for the year was $516,856.
 

Wiseman Aviation was not available for this month's meeting.

December’s fuel flow is up 26% from December 2023, but total fuel flow for the calendar year was actually just barely under 2023, down 1%. Overall sales have been very stable for the past two years.
 

Express Visitor Center

The Express Visitor Center, often referred to as the old café space, has had some progress since the last time we met. We are working with a contractor in town which is both specking out the improvements as well as the construction portion of it. The first part of that included getting an exhibit of what it would cosmetically look like, review and provide a final scope and fee. The architectural rending was received early, and we provided notes, and we are now waiting for the final scope and fee so that we can move forward with a construction contract. We anticipate getting that final scope and fee in next week and as it stands right now, if we can meet this deadline, then it looks like the end of April, we should have the visitor center storefront completed or near completion.

Right now the Convention of Visitors Bureau (CVB) is providing staffing for the visitor center and the plan is to do that for 8 hours a day, seven days a week based on our flight schedule in order to try to catch as many departures as possible, since folks on the departures tend to spend a little more time in the airport than arrivals but also catching some of the arrivals, for folks that are looking for some tourism information.


Airport Micro Market

For the Airport micro market, we did get two (2) vendors that were interested in partnering with the city. We had a selection panel which selected the higher scoring of the two vendors, and we have started negotiations. It's looking very promising right now and we should be moving forward with our contract with them very soon and are expecting to see them open around the same time or even a little earlier as there is no construction for this area, and they can begin operating, 24/7, as soon as the equipment is delivered and installed. Another note is there are two phases to the micro market as there will also be a designated area within the hold room, post TSA.
 
SREB

We have received further documentation on the GMP or guaranteed maximum price and have reviewed those documents with our design consultants and contractors to go over their comments and are working with the FAA for a better understanding as to what is eligible and what is ineligible for funding. We are looking at having a majority of the work covered by several, around 8-10, various grants, many which require certain state and local matches. Because this the GMP will have to be split into multiple phases it should allow us to begin the process as we still finalize later stages. Total construction time is planned to take somewhere between 12-18 months if all goes according to plan and we hope to have our snow equipment parked within the next 2 years.
 
Coil Door

There is a coil door that separates the terminal and secured area within the airport, this door leads you through TSA and into the hold room. On December 23, 2024, that coil door’s internal spring broke after the second flight of the day locking the door in the closed position. Airport staff contacted Facilities to aid in diagnosis of the door and see if they could get it back to operational, unfortunately they were unable to.
Because of this a change of condition was issued to TSA, this was because of a change in operations due to the door not being operable. Airport staff and TSA worked together and came up with an agreement to escort traveling passengers through the arrival doors, around the building to the hold room for security screening. This was labor intensive but allowed us to continue with operations.

One of our contractors that we work with was called in to help out with brainstorming a temporary solution while we worked on coming up with a long-term fix and a temporary wall and door were installed on December 27^th to allow patrons to access the screening area directly. Although this is a solid solution is temporary and airport staff is still working internally on figuring out the best plan to move forward and identifying funding for this.
 

• American did pause their LAX weekly service. This pause was due to low enplanement numbers, but they are looking to start back up in May for the summer season. We expected a weekly route to be challenging, and we are hoping that when they return it may be with more frequency. We will be working on a new marketing campaign  before the route starts in the hope that it gets the word out and will increase the chances of it being successful.
• For our air service update, we're working with a consultant and should have some meetings with airlines in the next few months.
• Social media recap for 2024; we have three (3) social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram and X. Across all three platforms we had 348 posts, 9,004 engagements, which are things like a reaction, a comment, a click, or a share, and then 108,758 impressions, which is the total time our messaging popped up on someone's screen. All of these numbers are an improvement from last year, which was our first full year of using these platforms. We're proud of these numbers as it certainly takes time to build an audience.
• We had very different top performing posts across our 3 platforms. Our non-stop to LAX announcement was our top performing Facebook post. Our most popular post on X was a snow-covered Flagstaff inviting people to visit and fly Flagstaff and a picture of the Canadian Royal Air Force was our most popular Instagram post. What was popular was very different across our three platforms, and it is interesting to see the different audiences we are reaching with each one.

The airport has two parking lots, the terminal lot, which is our original parking lot right across the street from the airport terminal, where the south half was constructed in 1993 and the north half was added in 1997. This lot has approximately 380 spaces. We also have our new economy parking lot which opened in 2023 and introduced our paid parking system. This lot is still within walking distance to the terminal and has 413 spaces.
 
The rates for our paid parking system were proposed in late 2021 and based on a study that we did looking at similar airports which was started in 2019 and revised in 2020 and 2021. These rates were approved and were adopted into City Code and went into effective in January 2022 with an increase for July 2023.  Since the system didn't get implemented until after July 1, 2023, the initial rates were never implemented.
 
Since our initial rate study, we have seen significant increases to both construction and maintenance costs. The revenue generated in the paid parking system goes to various items including the third-party call center services for the paid parking system, ParkFlag staff which work out here through the week, all maintenance on the equipment, snow operations and the repayment to the General Fund which was used to pay for the construction of the lot up front. We have also had feedback from our customers about what they would like to see in parking, including requests for other choices such as a monthly parking rate.
 
Since implementing the paid parking system, we have had a decrease in usage, seeing as many of the people who were taking advantage of the free parking were most likely not using the airport. Since we have the capacity now, airport staff believed it would be beneficial to add additional rates that could help capture additional business that maybe has a demand to park out here.
 
Airport staff is looking for commission approval to add a monthly and lost ticket rate that would be effective upon adoption by City Council and a rate increase that would go into effect on July 1, 2026. Rates are listed below along with the background on the proposed rates.
 


Background on proposed rates:

• Weekly rate = 6 x daily rate (1 free day per week)
• Monthly rate = 5 x daily rate (2 free days per week)
• Lost ticket fee = 1.5 weeks of parking

The 2026 rate increase would go up $2 in terminal lot and $1 in economy lot with the same math applied for the weekly, monthly and lost ticket costs.

The Airport Commission was asked to discuss and vote in approval or non-approval to the fees presented. Commissioner Shouse motioned to move forward with the monthly rates and the lost ticket fees to City Council but to hold off the 2026 rate increases, Commissioner White seconded the motion.
 
Various commissioners requested that the airport bring more information to the commission, including other rate increase options and other revenue streams that could be explored.
 

Moved by David Steiner, seconded by Kolby White

Vote: 7 - 0 - Unanimously