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Grand Rapids Airport (GRR) News and Developments

joeDowntown

By joeDowntown
in Grand Rapids

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Raildude's dad
Raildude's dad

I listened to a presentation yesterday by the airport's  Facilities Manager. This info is from notes I took. I tried to get info i thought you all would be interested in. 2020 had $78.8 M of capi

Hoeks
Hoeks

Below are some photos of the new addition taken this past weekend.   Hard to describe, but this is a drastic change to how the airport feels.   It used to feel very small walking up the low, dark ramp

walker
walker

WARNING: old man long story coming up: Sure GRR can handle large planes.  In fact, on July 26, 1989 a flight from Grand Rapids set the non-stop distance record for a commercial twinjet, 8,893 s

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egrguy Burg

egrguy

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, joeDowntown said:

Portland, OR w/ Allegiant. That’s a great route and good progress on getting to the west coast. The other is a limited route to Sturgis, SD during the motorcycle event (seems kind of odd. Don’t you ride to Sturgis? :) ). 

Joe

Portland is great (interesting its over Seattle?) but I think that's a huge plus over another FL route from Allegiant. 

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GR8scott Burg

GR8scott

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Posted

Meh... certainly not surprised but also not too exciting. I would be surprised if the rapid city route is full and lasts after this year. PDX is west coast service so I am not complaining but Seattle, Bay area and San Diego are all routes with more demand, much bigger markets and served by pier cities such as Omaha, Madison and Des Moines so I'd imagine GRR would be able to support some or all of those routes, Allegiant doesn't do Seattle though, bring on Alaska Airlines. 

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Pattmost20 Hamlet

Pattmost20

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, GR8scott said:

Meh... certainly not surprised but also not too exciting. I would be surprised if the rapid city route is full and lasts after this year. PDX is west coast service so I am not complaining but Seattle, Bay area and San Diego are all routes with more demand, much bigger markets and served by pier cities such as Omaha, Madison and Des Moines so I'd imagine GRR would be able to support some or all of those routes, Allegiant doesn't do Seattle though, bring on Alaska Airlines. 

Allegiant doesn't fly to SFO either ( I know they fly to Oakland, but it is the smallest of the major bay area airports). PDX or San Diego make the most sense, with LAX being so close to San Diego, it makes sense that they would go for a different area of the West Coast. If GRR keeps growing as it has, I could see Oakland being third and San Diego being fourth for West Coast Flights. I think it will take a while for other airlines to add West Coast flights, they will probably monitor demand on the Allegiant Flights for a while.

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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On 2/11/2021 at 7:44 AM, MJLO said:

The sad part is based on Jan/Feb and the first part of March, the airport was going to blow its previous records out of the water in 2020.  It would have topped 4million passengers. 

It'll come back, and strong. We flew from GRR to PIE (St Pete/Clearwater) this past weekend and I can't tell you how much I love it. Other than the weather being so severe we couldn't fly out Friday and got postponed to Saturday, but flying from a small airport to a small airport without having to do a ton of driving is really spoiling us. And GRR's airport is leaps and bounds better than PIE, lol. When we flew back Wednesday afternoon most of the gates in concourse A were teaming with people. 

I'm surprised that Pinellas County tourism board (St Pete/Clearwater) doesn't heavily advertise in this market with how easy it is. Especially for older travelers who hate big airports. The travel time from PIE to the gulf coast is half that of driving from Tampa airport. 

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GR8scott Burg

GR8scott

Posted
Posted
On 2/10/2021 at 6:01 AM, Pattmost20 said:

Allegiant doesn't fly to SFO either ( I know they fly to Oakland, but it is the smallest of the major bay area airports). PDX or San Diego make the most sense, with LAX being so close to San Diego, it makes sense that they would go for a different area of the West Coast. If GRR keeps growing as it has, I could see Oakland being third and San Diego being fourth for West Coast Flights. I think it will take a while for other airlines to add West Coast flights, they will probably monitor demand on the Allegiant Flights for a while.

Yea I could see bay area soon as well but once again compared with closet pier city Des Moines who already has LAX just added PDX and SAN among others so sure GRR could also support SAN. 

As for the expansion, a few weeks back the airport acknowledged restarting soon and the video includes new vantage points that really would make this look great, cant wait!

 

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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On 2/23/2021 at 12:24 AM, GR8scott said:

Yea I could see bay area soon as well but once again compared with closet pier city Des Moines who already has LAX just added PDX and SAN among others so sure GRR could also support SAN. 

As for the expansion, a few weeks back the airport acknowledged restarting soon and the video includes new vantage points that really would make this look great, cant wait!

 

Nice! 

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GR8scott Burg

GR8scott

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Boston and Destiny, FL. Are these new routes?

https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/grand-rapids/allegiant-announces-two-new-non-stop-fights-from-gerald-r-ford-international-airport

Joe

Interesting, Boston was announced a year ago but was postponed because of covid and Destin was more recent, both routes already started flying so doubt they mean there will be another new announcement of 2 additional routes but sounds like Allegiant is considering adding more throughout this year, hopefully San Diego! 

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walker Burg

walker

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Posted

I found this on YouTube just now.  Don't know anything about the guy that took it.    It's a video of the inaugural flight on Allegiant March 5 to Boston and then back to GRR. 

Trip Report | Allegiant Inaugural flight, Grand Rapids to Boston

Nothing extraordinary about the video, but since I haven't flown since before the pandemic, it makes me eager to start traveling again.  Maybe a little later this year.   

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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9 hours ago, walker said:

I found this on YouTube just now.  Don't know anything about the guy that took it.    It's a video of the inaugural flight on Allegiant March 5 to Boston and then back to GRR. 

Trip Report | Allegiant Inaugural flight, Grand Rapids to Boston

Nothing extraordinary about the video, but since I haven't flown since before the pandemic, it makes me eager to start traveling again.  Maybe a little later this year.   

That's a cool shot of the airport at night. 

image.thumb.png.5829296d29d68a6891478b350bbc24dc.png

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walker Burg

walker

Posted
Posted (edited)

Southwest announced today seasonal service to Myrtle Beach SC. 

WOODTV: southwest-adds-nonstop-flight-to-myrtle-beach-from-ford-airport

I guess this is a popular place for golfers but I find it hard to believe there would be much demand for a flight there from Grand Rapids.  They have a lot of nice hotels along the beach though.  What seems like several lifetimes ago I worked for a company that had a factory in nearby Conway SC  and I'd make business trips there and stay at one of the beach front hotels.    

Edit - well since I first posted this WOODTV has altered the headline and story to say just the opposite.  Southwest is not adding a nonstop flight to Myrtle Beach.  I guess I was right about the dubious demand for a flight like this.  Think of all the stories WOODTV could write about all the places that various airlines are not adding nonstop flights from Grand Rapids.   

Edited by walker
WOODTV was mistaken
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GR8scott Burg

GR8scott

Posted
Posted
23 hours ago, walker said:

Southwest announced today seasonal service to Myrtle Beach SC. 

WOODTV: southwest-adds-nonstop-flight-to-myrtle-beach-from-ford-airport

I guess this is a popular place for golfers but I find it hard to believe there would be much demand for a flight there from Grand Rapids.  They have a lot of nice hotels along the beach though.  What seems like several lifetimes ago I worked for a company that had a factory in nearby Conway SC  and I'd make business trips there and stay at one of the beach front hotels.    

Edit - well since I first posted this WOODTV has altered the headline and story to say just the opposite.  Southwest is not adding a nonstop flight to Myrtle Beach.  I guess I was right about the dubious demand for a flight like this.  Think of all the stories WOODTV could write about all the places that various airlines are not adding nonstop flights from Grand Rapids.   

definitely sounds like a low demand route that was already canceled by Allegiant, but appears there is one added seasonally to Sarasota, one that is currently covered by Allegiant so must be demand there along with all the other FL cities! Not complaining about added competitive routes but would still love to see more west coast routes not served.  Hopefully the expansion will provide them and speaking of that, looks like they finished up some prep work where you can see the outline that was not repaved, looks like a much wider and longer footprint, may even look like a big airport when completed along with the new control tower!?

Image

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, GR8scott said:

definitely sounds like a low demand route that was already canceled by Allegiant, but appears there is one added seasonally to Sarasota, one that is currently covered by Allegiant so must be demand there along with all the other FL cities! Not complaining about added competitive routes but would still love to see more west coast routes not served.  Hopefully the expansion will provide them and speaking of that, looks like they finished up some prep work where you can see the outline that was not repaved, looks like a much wider and longer footprint, may even look like a big airport when completed along with the new control tower!?

Image

Awesome! I'm excited. We're closing on a condo in Florida (investment) in a few weeks so we'll be using the airport a lot more. 

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MJLO City

MJLO

Posted
Posted

My impression has been that Allegiant was ramping up to make GR a northern summer destination for people looking to escape oppressive heat pre-covid.    Grand Rapids had been marketed more and more as the gateway to Michigan's vacation country.  It would be awesome to see if that momentum could be recaptured.

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