Paine Field to reopen in August after 10-week pause of commercial flights

After pausing flights for 10 weeks, commercial flights will take off once again from Paine Field starting August 1, 2020. The airport took advantage of a decrease in passengers to complete ramp maintenance and repairs with a planned closure of May 22 to July 31.

The Everett Herald reports that Alaska will resume flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix, and United will fly to Denver when the airport reopens next month, for a total of three daily flights combined. Before the pandemic, both airlines were operating 24 departures a day.

Paine Field has been open for commercial flights for just over a year, and has served more than a million passengers and seen over 8,560 departures since opening on March 4, 2019.

Testing out the newly-opened Paine Field Airport

Originally, the airport had planned to schedule the safety and repair work over a four-month period, but decided completing the upgrades all at once while avoiding passenger inconvenience would be more efficient. The improvements are expected to allow the airport to be better positioned to serve passengers this summer.

While reported numbers from the Transportation Security Administration showed an increase in travelers over the Fourth of July weekend nationwide, passenger levels are still nowhere near 2019 counts.

Passenger numbers and aircraft operations have been down across the board at Sea-Tac International Airport in recent months as well. Non-essential travel is not included on the list of resumed activities until Phase 3 of Washington state’s Safe Start plan.