As Hilton Head Island Airport expands, Savannah/Hilton Head adds four new gates

As crews at Hilton Head Island Airport continue building a terminal expansion, nearby Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport is adding more space as well.

SAV is adding four new gates to its existing 367,395-square-foot facility, bumping its total gate count from 15 to 19. The terminal expansion will add 43,735 square feet of space, including a large common area, restrooms, and space for new tenants.

The idea is to create more room in an airport that has seen growing demand from passengers.

“We need it right now. Our traffic has gone up exponentially over the past six, seven, eight years; we’ve surpassed where we were with covid,” Lori Lynah, the airport’s senior director of marketing and air service development, said.

Last year, the airport ushered through about 4.1 million visitors, up from 3.9 million in 2023, 2.8 million in 2021, and about 3 million in 2019, statistics show. More than 2 million of those passengers traveled by air between January and June of 2025, and Lynah said she expects the numbers to continue to grow. The passenger base will also likely become less leisure-travel heavy, she said, thanks to developments like the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America that opened a few months ago about 30 miles west of Savannah.

Currently, leisure travelers account for 65-70% of SAV’s customers, Lynah said.

“I think in the next year we’ll see that change a little bit because of more folks moving to the region, and because of Hyundai suppliers, not just the company themselves,” she said.

TSA and parking expansion

SAV also recently expanded its security checkpoint to six lanes, and added about 1,000 new parking spaces across two asphalt surface lots. The airport now has four surface parking areas, an economy garage, and a terminal garage, for a total of about 6,000 spaces. A new parking garage is currently in the design stages, Lynah said, and the airport is actively seeking out new routes; Lynah said she hopes direct flights to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Toronto, and the United Kingdom are on the horizon.

Spirit Airlines is set to launch at SAV with daily service to Newark, New Jersey, Aug. 14. Flights to Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; and Detroit, Michigan are scheduled to begin in October.

Meanwhile, the Hilton Head Island Airport, located on the north end, is in the middle of an expansion project that will more than triple the size of the terminal, said Jon Rembold, Beaufort County airports director. The expansion will increase the facility’s total square footage from about 20,000 to roughly 67,000 by early next year; after that, crews will renovate the airport’s existing facility.

HHH hasn’t been updated since the 1990s, Rembold said. It needed repairs for a while, but a planned 2021 expansion was put on hold because of interest rates. Only prop planes flew into the airport until 2018, when the runway was expanded to accommodate larger jets. The impact was almost instant, Rembold said; passenger traffic went up from 54,000 passengers in 2017 to 79,000 in 2018 to about 233,000 by 2019, Rembold said.

“The runway project changed everything. It doubled the capacity, and we saw the response right away,” he said.

The new terminal building, which is attached to the old one, will house security screening and all three of the airport’s gates upon completion. The gates will be roomier, and the building will have more space for retail tenants. HHH is also adding jet bridges; currently, all boarding is done on-ground.

In the old building, which will be renovated after the new one is complete, visitors will find airline ticketing counters and offices, baggage carousels, rental car desks, and a grand hall, or an open space where the Transportation Security Administration line is right now.

The total cost of the renovations will be around $85 million, Rembold said. Phase one, which is currently underway, will cost about $43.8 million, with funding from the Federal Aviation Administration, the state, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the airport itself.

“The purpose is to accommodate the folks using the airport. Our numbers have been pretty steady for a couple of years, but we need to meet the Hilton Head Island standard, really,” Rembold said. “We have so many locals and visitors flying out of here, and the old building was not meeting the standard.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.