Listen up, Ohio! Hilton Head Airport announces 6 new nonstop flights
The Hilton Head Island Airport announced Thursday that it would begin six new nonstop flights to Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; St. Louis, Missouri; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The new flights will be run by United Airlines, according to Beaufort County Airports Director Jon Rembold.
“Our citizens have struggled a lot during the last year, and we need some kind of ‘wow moment,’” Mayor John McCann said at a Thursday news conference. “This is a ‘wow moment.’”
The flights will begin on May 27.
“When you think of one true economic development moment, this is one that’s happening here today,” Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce CEO and President Bill Miles said.
Terminal expansion
Although traffic at the airport bottomed out last spring, it rebounded quickly as visitors used the smaller airport to access the island for vacations during the pandemic. Rembold said air traffic at the Hilton Head Island Airport last fall was nearly the same as the year before.
He said new flights to Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas/Fort Worth and Washington, D.C., drove visitors to Hilton Head. Private jet and business jet travel was “absolutely nonstop” last summer and fall, Rembold said.
An impending terminal expansion comes on the heels of a runway extension that made it easier for larger planes to land at the airport. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the airport was experiencing 200% increases in passengers from previous years, which the application said “put extreme strain on the pre‐9/11 terminal design and its parking lot.”
The plan adds 43,000 square feet to the 18,500 square-foot building, about half of which is a holding room for passengers waiting to board. The other half includes a new grand hall and a four-lane passenger drop‐off and pick-up area.
Rembold said there may be more food options in the new holding room, but there will be no established restaurant space.
The expansion comes with a cost. The project’s budget is $37.5 million, and $20 million of that is being paid by a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Rembold.
He estimates that after standard 5% contributions from the South Carolina Aeronautics Commission and the airport itself, the project still needs about $15 million.
Affecting the neighbors
Expanding the airport comes with more ramifications than financial ones.
The new terminal expands south into the Hunter Road area, and five businesses were relocated to make way for the new building. Business owners were reimbursed for relocating, but many expressed frustration with the process.
The new terminal will require filling a half-acre of wetlands next to the airport.
Neighbors in the Palmetto Hall gated community across Beach City Road have often complained of the noise that comes with daily commercial flights into and out of the airport.
The congregation at St. James Historic Baptist Church is preparing to relocate from its original site, where native islanders have been gathering to worship since 1886. When the airport’s runway expanded in 2018, its runway protection zone enveloped the church’s location. The FAA recommends airports own the buildings in the safety zones and that people not gather there, since most aircraft issues arise during takeoff and landing.
To relocate the church to Union Cemetery Road, the Town of Hilton Head Island and Beaufort County are on the hook for a new building for the congregation. Town Council member Glenn Stanford told The Island Packet in 2020 that the FAA will reimburse 90% of those relocation costs.
This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 8:55 AM.
