Author: Brian Sprenger

2024 Enplanement Projection
March 5, 2024

Quick Notes
BZN projected to enplane a record 1,307,094 passengers in 2024, up 6.1% over 2023. Total passengers (enplaned + deplaned) are expected to surpass 2.6 million.
As the BZN market matures, significant new airline service becomes less likely since BZN has service by all six of the nations largest airlines plus three low cost carriers. In addition, we have non-stop service to 19 of our top 20 markets. Future service additions will likely be seasonal and /or less than daily.
BZN has non-stop service to 25 destinations throughout the United States of which 12 operate seasonally.

Based on current projections, we anticipate that BZN will enplane approximately 1,307,094 passengers in 2024 which would be another record. The projected 6.1% growth represents an increase of 75,179 enplanements over the previous annual record set in 2023.
Calendar year 2023 enplanements surpassed the previous record set in 2022 by 96,234 passengers. The 8.5% growth was nearly double the 4.7% growth we projected on March 1, 2023. The increase was due to several factors including strong demand for travel to more remote areas of the country, and population growth in Southwest Montana. The summer and fall showed particularly strong performance with double digit growth occurring through this period. For the rest of the year, we saw a maturing market with more moderate growth.
Factors that will positively impact BZN in 2024 include continued population growth and summer season inbound travel demand. On the negative side, less than ideal snow during the winter season 2023/2024 will impact growth potential through early March. We do not expect to see additional airlines in 2024 but we will see the return of non-stop service to both Chicago-Midway, IL and Charlotte NC which were experimental markets operated in the summer of 2021 when much of the country was still recovering from the effects of COVID 19. That being said, we are cautiously optimistic that BZN will continue to perform well and maintain our position handling more than 40% of passengers traveling to or from Montana. We hope these projections by airport management will give some guidance for calendar year 2024 expectations, however, all projections are based on the information available as of March 5, 2024 and could change throughout the year.

BZN historical and projected passenger enplanements 2019—2024

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year	Increase
2019	60,548	60,446	74,922	46,114	53,460	77,552	95,303	89,169	68,326	53,743	41,412	64,711	785,706	17.1%
2020	69,158	71,075	47,266	1,417	5,753	17,229	42,118	49,940	43,995	36,654	26,101	35,603	446,309	(43.2%)
2021	44,605	49,351	68,033	50,622	63,263	108,679	138,920	132,109	98,287	81,386	59,054	79,390	973,699	118.2%
2022	83,551	84,977	105,959	71,578	79,383	109,698	128,371	130,033	103,482	87,449	66,606	84,594	1,135,681	16.6%
2023	91,699	93,190	108,022	74,119	83,166	119,193	142,930	142,631	120,127	96,812	71,048	88,978	1,231,915	8.5%
2024 (Low)	92,478	95,101	111,208	78,361	86,918	129,814	154,435	149,229	122,112	97,860	74,781	92,264	1,284,561	4.3%
2024 (Projection)	92,478	95,813	113,809	80,844	89,517	131,931	156,288	150,233	123,706	101,173	77,589	93,713	1,307,094	6.1%
2024 (High)	92,478	97,538	113,954	84,900	90,539	137,005	162,534	153,225	126,228	103,105	83,654	97,667	1,342,827	9.0%

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