Airport Experience® News - ACDBE Issue 2025

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR

RNO REVITALIZATION With Passenger Traffic Surging, RNO Is Prepping For The Future

BY CAROL WARD

ditor’s Note: Reno-Tahoe International Airport (RNO) is in the midst of a $1 billion capital program called MoreRNO. The multi-year infrastructure program has multiple facets, including construction of two new concourses. Airport Director Daren Griffin says the new facilities will represent “a generational leap forward” from what is in place today. In early May, Griffin shared an update on the latest developments with AXN’s Carol Ward. E

WARD: Can we start by setting the stage with a passenger traffic update for RNO? GRIFFIN: We are sitting in a good spot right now. Business has been strong – 2024 was our busiest year from a passenger perspective in 18 years. Our growth out of Covid has been extraordinary and really unanticipated. We were on a nice trajectory, like a lot of airports were leading up to Covid. So far in 2025, we are 4% above 2024. It really started taking off last summer. We had a tremendous amount of additional seats coming to the market – 90,000 additional seats in the summer of ‘24. There’s a lot of growth in our region, a lot of tourism and a lot of business activity in the airports. WARD: It depends on the airport obviously, but those airports that are more reliant on international travel are concerned about the environment for those visitors. GRIFFIN: We benefit sometimes from things that are hard to wrap your head around. When there’s a dip in international vacations, fewer Americans going abroad, we tend to see even more activity here because it’s a great tourism destination. Northern Nevada is where the great outdoors meets the great indoors. We don’t have direct service to Canada. My friends

in Las Vegas, they’re suffering right now because the drop off in Canadian traffic has been significant, but that’s not our situation. WARD: RNO is in the middle of the MoreRNO capital program. Can you give me an update on how things are progressing? GRIFFIN: We started this program in the 2022-2023 time frame. We expanded the ticketing hall – we had too many people trying to check skis and snowboards and golf clubs and bags. Tourism drives checked baggage, and we just needed more space to improve the customer experience. We completed that on schedule and on budget. Then last fall we completed a revamp of the roadway in front of the terminal building. We reconstructed 100% of it, improved it for safety and visibility and added canopies to improve the customer experience. We are now under construction for a new ground transportation center. This is an incredibly strong rental car market. The ground transportation center is our first-ever public-private partnership – it’s a $300 million project. The facility will be a two- to three-minute walk from our baggage claim. It’s also where Uber and Lyft and others will operate.

Above: Daren Griffin, president and CEO, Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority

12

AX NEWS JUNE 2025