Some of the flights out of Minot
Minot International caters to oilfield workers who fly in for a few weeks of work and then fly out again for a week off. The airport, with only two gates, has gone from three daily flights in 2009 to as many as 15 a day, with an average of 85 percent of the seats filled, says Andy Solsvig, the airport’s director. The industry average is 82.1 percent. Some of the flights out of Minot include charters for Halliburton (HAL) and Hess (HES) employees, Solsvig says.
Stanton Dodson, executive chairman of Citadel Energy Partners, which provides water services in oil fields, says North Dakota could use even more flights. He’s traveled from Los Angeles to his company’s office in Watford City, N.D., every other week for the past three years, usually flying into Minot or Dickinson and occasionally into Williston. Every flight is packed, he says. Trips to Williston are almost always sold out, and the limited number of flights to Dickinson makes it difficult to rebook when necessary. Minot, with more flights, is Dodson’s backup. “If you get stuck on the roads because of weather or truck traffic, which happens often, then you’ve got another option” at Minot, he says.
Delta began service to Minot when it bought Northwest Airlines in 2008. It added Williston in 2012 and Dickinson in 2013. Delta flies twice daily from Williston and Dickinson and six times from Minot. United added Minot to its regional jet service in 2010 and expanded into Williston and Dickinson in 2012 and 2013, respectively, with nonstop flights to Denver. Minot’s diminutive terminal has to deal with passenger volume it wasn’t designed to handle, Solsvig says. “Our facilities are tapped out. On occasion, if we have two or three flights that are really close together, it’s standing-room only,” he says. So Minot is constructing a $45 million, 115,000-square-foot terminal with six gates.