The Billings-Logan International Airport is seeing a record number of passengers since the pandemic this December.
Just this month, the airport has seen 80,000 passengers, and over 900,000 this year.
In comparison, December 2022 and 2023 had roughly 71,000 passengers.
The Billings airport's record for most passengers was in December of 2019, with about 87,000. However, one of the airport's operation supervisors, Mick McCarthy, expects this year to surpass that number.
Because of these high numbers, long-term parking has become quite a bit of an issue.
As far as the eye can see, parked cars lined the street on Thursday.
"We don't have really any quick fix for this problem. We're just doing the best we can, and serve our customers the best we can and hopefully everyone can see that," McCarthy said.
McCarthy has worked at the airport for 31 years and hasn't seen parking this intense since the 1990s. He gets to work at 3 a.m. and counts the amount of spots available. He said recently those spots have been claimed by 5 a.m.
McCarthy believes this is happening for a variety of reason, such as the airport's recent $60 million expansion of Terminal B, additional flights to Denver and Phoenix, the holiday season, and people traveling post-pandemic.
"A lot of people are just tired of staying at home, I think. It's just steadily been increasing after COVID. Everybody was kind of stuck at home, and so we've been seeing an increase every year after that," he said.
On Thursday, cars were parked in long-term parking, the overflow lot, grassy areas near the Rims, past the Beacon Air Group, with some parking nearly a mile away form the airport terminal.
The airport staff have accommodated for the issue, providing free shuttles to and from the overflow parking, having staff outside to help park cars, and putting the snow removal staff on parking duty.
Brian Shannahan was on his way to Buffalo on Thursday. He's from Musselshell County, so he was surprised by the parking situation but was thankful to encounter an airport shuttle transporting passengers to the entrance.
"I didn't mind a bit. I appreciated the shuttle. I didn't know that there would be a shuttle out there," he said.
Some passengers were luckier than others, like Nick Vertz.
Vertz thought of trying the long-term parking lot in hopes someone would be leaving a spot. He was able to find a spot and had a short walk to the terminal.
"I can't complain at all," he said.
Until the holiday season slows down, airport staff is planning on short-term solutions to get them through these next few years, like allowing passengers with handicap tags to park in short-term parking.
McCarthy said shuttles will run from 4 a.m. until Midnight until needed. He hopes the airport will eventually build an additional lot or parking garage to prevent a similar situation in the future.
"We'll continue to run the shuttle regardless of if we're doing snow removal, 'cuz we don't want our passengers to have to walk that .25 of a mile in a snowstorm dragging their suitcase," he said.
