GREAT FALLS — Passengers arriving at Great Falls International Airport often get one of their first impressions of the community before they leave the terminal.
WATCH: Great Falls airport opens expanded concourse at 50-year mark
Now, as the building marks its 50th anniversary, the airport is wrapping up its latest round of renovations designed to give travelers more room and prepare the terminal for larger planes.
An expanded waiting area at Gate 1 opened recently with 164 seats… nearly 100 more than it had before.
Airport Director John Faulkner said the additional space was needed as airlines replaced smaller regional jets with larger planes carrying more than 100 passengers.
“This plane, when it departed, 160 people come off, and 160 people are sitting around,” Faulkner said. “So it gets pretty crowded.”
He explained the original waiting areas at gates 1 and 2 were designed to accommodate between 30 and 60 people.
Before the updates, passengers sometimes had to sit or stand in the hallway. Which, he said, created congestion as travelers arriving in Great Falls crossed paths with those waiting to leave.
“Prior to the expansion, we had seating down the middle of the hallway,” Faulkner said. “And so when we were trying to get people through and people in, it became quite congested down here with larger planes.”
The work is part of the airport’s approximately $6.5 million West Concourse Expansion and Rehabilitation project, and paid in part using federal funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Along with more seating at Gate 1, the project adds two family-sized restrooms, more restaurant seating and an outdoor deck accessible from gates 1 and 2.
The waiting area serving Delta passengers at Gate 2 will eventually double in size.
Faulkner said the airport also added more tables near the restaurant, and between 300 and 400 travelers may pass through during the first group of morning departures.
“So really, this project does a lot to upgrade the terminal, get more capacity out of the existing space and really efficiently use the space we had,” Faulkner said.
The gate project follows several other improvements completed in recent years, including an expanded ticketing lobby, an upgraded baggage system and other maintenance work.
Faulkner said the goal has been to update the 50-year-old building while making it more comfortable for the larger groups of passengers now arriving and departing at the same time.
“In a lot of ways, we’re the front door in the way people experience Great Falls for the first time,” Faulkner said. “We want to make the airport look like our community.”
