With the top basketball players in the world and droves of celebrities and fans in Utah, the Salt Lake City Airport was busy. However, the fanfare didn’t seem to impact the Wasatch Back skies.
Salt Lake City Airport Communications Director Nancy Volmer said as predicted, the airport set a new record Monday: over 35,000 passengers either arrived to or departed from the airport.
Private jet traffic surged there, too. The airport even closed a non-commercial runway to make space for 65 private planes to park. Volmer estimated those only accounted for about one-third of the total number of private planes there over the weekend.
But at other airports in the area, flight data looked relatively normal.
Heber Valley Airport Manager Travis Biggs said the All Star Game didn’t seem to have a strong impact. Despite local media outlets reporting a delay for some of the private planes to leave after Sunday’s game, Biggs said he wasn’t surprised those flyers didn’t make the drive to Heber to fly out instead.
“Flying is just convenience, so if they can be closer there, they're gonna fly there — and because they don't know that there's going to be a big traffic jam there, you know, they just know that it's right next to the stadium.”
FlightAware is a service that publishes flight data for airports worldwide. It reported the Heber airport serviced 32 flights Friday, then 35 flights each day Saturday through Monday. That’s relatively normal compared to the rest of February through the weekend, when the highest number was 36 and the lowest was 30.
Those daily traffic numbers came in at least 25% lower than the same days in 2022. In a recent interview with KPCW, private aviation analyst Brian Foley said private flights are down nationwide recently, due largely to economic factors.
Biggs said overall, weather is the main factor that impacts how many people fly into Heber, not events.
“I mean, Sundance a little bit — other than that, it's not really events. I think it's more just skiing, and then in the summer months when it's just nice, you know, people come out to their secondary homes or to come recreate, but I think that's mostly what drives the jet traffic.”
Consistent with the Heber airport, data on private flights at other nearby airports didn’t show traffic increases over the weekend.
At Provo Municipal Airport, the weekend average came in around 190 arrivals and departures Friday through Monday. That’s right in between the airport’s peak day in February with 225 and the lowest day with 177.
At Skypark Airport near Bountiful, the roughly 120 arrivals and departures per day were some of the lowest daily totals of February.
