CHEYENNE, Wyo. — After months of waiting, Cheyenne community members will soon be able to fly out of the city’s only airport.
Commercial flights are expected to resume on Sept. 10 as the airport’s latest runway renovation project nears completion, according to Director of Aviation Tim Bradshaw.
Over the past four years, the airport has undergone a $62 million phased rehabilitation of Runway 09-27. The latest phase to replace approximately 3,600 feet of the runway’s pavement started on April 5, and commercial flights have been suspended since then. The airport’s secondary runway remained open, however, to general aviation and military operations. The project is funded by the Wyoming Department of Transportation, Federal Airline Administration and National Guard Bureau.
Airport runways last about 50 years, according to Bradshaw. The end of the project comes as a relief to the director, who was appointed to his position midway through it.
“It’s great [to be almost finished]; this is so disruptive,” he said. “It causes so many problems for the airport. It has to be done every 50 years, it just so happens that now it has to be replaced.”
In addition to a new runway, flyers will get to see two new accommodations at the airport.
The first is a passenger boarding bridge. In May, airport staff submitted a pre-application to the FAA in May to construct a Passenger Boarding Bridge, or PBB, that will be connected to the Passenger Terminal at the airport. A PBB is an enclosed, elevated passageway which extends from an airport terminal gate to an airplane. The contraption allows passengers to board and disembark a plane without going outside. The cost share for the project is 93.75% from the FAA, 3.75% from the Wyoming Department of Transportation and 2.5% from the airport.
The second is an extended parking lot funded with the Sixth Penny sales tax. In 2021, Wyoming voters passed Proposition 6 under the tax to fund $823,361 toward the project. The lot is currently under construction, and is also expected to be completed by the airport’s opening date.
