Jackson Hole Airport (KJAC) sees steady decline in plane traffic: Takeoffs and landings down 16 percent, but passenger numbers at record levels

More people than ever are boarding planes at Jackson Hole Airport, but at the same time the airspace over the valley is measurably emptier than it was a decade ago.

Measured by takeoffs and landings tracked by the control tower, there has been a 16 percent decline in air traffic at Wyoming’s largest airport over the past six years.

“The main thing is that everything is down,” said Craig Logan, the airport’s director of operations. “We’re basically putting more people on fewer and larger planes, which is good, noise-wise.”

The downward trend in aircraft using the Grand Teton National Park jetport belies a steady uptick in the number of people flying commercially into Jackson Hole. With six weeks to go in the year, 2014 is well positioned to be the busiest in the airport’s history, and likely more than 310,000 people will board a plane here by the time New Year’s rolls around.

But the number of aircraft operations — which can be either a landing or a takeoff — is expected to end down significantly. Extrapolating out to factor in the last two months of the year, airport managers anticipate 25,228 operations in 2014, down from 30,091 in 2008.

The control tower records do not include air traffic between the hours of 9:30 p.m. and 7 a.m. A voluntary air traffic “curfew” takes effect at 10:30 p.m.

Records for previous years were not readily available, but Logan said 2008 marked a peak.

“2008, 2009 was kind of a crescendo with everything — enplanements, operations,” he said. “The economy was raging good at that point.”

The steepest declines in airport traffic have been in general aviation, or in other words with private planes.

Jeff Brown, president of Jackson Hole Aviation, said that compared with the prerecession years business is “pretty dismal.”

“General aviation has been down since 2008, and it’s coming back very slowly,” Brown said. “We’re still way off from what it was in 2008. It was a crash.”

Using jet fuel sales as a barometer, private plane traffic dropped 45 percent, Brown said. He estimated that Jackson Hole Aviation’s business has made a 33 percent recovery in the seven years since.

Jackson Hole Airport Director Jim Elwood — who previously headed a similar airport operation in Aspen, Colorado — said that the declines in aircraft operations align with the trend being observed nationwide.

“I haven’t tried to compare the percentage shifts, but it’s not surprising to see overall that the operation counts are continuing to move downward,” Elwood said. “There’s pretty much a positive in the decrease in the fact that we’re carrying more passengers on each airplane.

“Then the surrounding impacts of the aircraft operation will decrease,” he said.

The airport director said those factors could include plane noise, as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

Commercial air traffic, measured by the volume of planes, fell 14.7 percent between 2008 and 2014. The year the Great Recession struck 7,808 commercial plane operations were recorded. Estimating for the last two months of the year, airport managers expect the tally to be 6,662 in 2014.

The contradictory trends in commercial air traffic — enplanements versus wheels-up operations — is a side effect of an “upsizing” of the aircraft using Jackson Hole Airport, Logan said.

“We were getting a lot more of the regional jets, and we were still getting turboprop aircraft back then too,” he said. “We were getting a number of 30-seat to 70-seat aircraft.”

Nowadays, Logan said, larger regional jets and Boeing 737 and 757s have become the norm.

The upsizing trend has carried over into the private and corporate planes, Elwood said.

“We’re seeing less of the smaller, single- and twin-engine airplanes,” he said. “Corporate jets, those aircraft are growing in both physical size and capabilities.”

The decline in aircraft operations has been a boon for some Jackson Hole Airport neighbors. Even at the recent lower levels, over the course of the year the airstrip is averaging about 70 plane operations a day.

“It’s been quieter,” said Bob Righter, a historian and Meadow Road resident of over 20 years. “What I’ve probably noticed more than anything is that the jets in the last 20 years have become less noisy. They have built the 737s and 757s much quieter than they used to be.

“We used to have planes coming in all the time a dozen years ago,” Righter said, discussing how flights once flew in late at night.

Righter’s recent history book, “Peaks, Politics and Passion,” includes a chapter that chronicles the Jackson Hole Airport and the tension between valley residents, the National Park Service and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The retired professor and seasonal resident said that nowadays the airport is less of a thorn in his side.

“I’ve become a little more tolerant of the planes, because I used to get enraged,” Righter said. “Of course I was younger and less tolerant and a little less deaf as well.

“I think it’s improved,” he said, “and it may be just my disposition.”

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