10
TERMINALS  
September 2026      AirportImprovement.com
FCA
The airport hosts a mix of seasonal and year-round service to 
more than a dozen cities via six air carriers:  Alaska, Allegiant, 
American, Delta, Sun Country and United. Last year, United was 
its busiest carrier with more than 450,000 seats in and out.
General aviation traffic has likewise expanded at FCA, so much 
so that Atlantic Aviation was inspired to purchase the airport’s 
fixed-base operation last September. 
With multiple factors simultaneously driving growth, airport 
traffic has skyrocketed. When Ratkowski arrived in 2004 
as manager of operations and maintenance, FCA served 
approximately 350,000 annual passengers; last year brought 
more than 1.1 million.
Currently, FCA is Montana’s second-busiest airport, trailing only 
Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport (BZN), which handled 
a record 2.8 million passengers last year.
“Post-COVID, [our traffic] just went crazy,” Ratkowski says, 
citing many consecutive years of double-digit gains. “We recovered 
almost immediately and it’s been off to the races ever since.” 
Previously, financial limitations had forced FCA to find more 
room for passengers without expanding the terminal. But that 
only worked for so long.
“We just ran out of options,” Ratkowski remarks. “There was 
no more gift shop space that we could convert to holdrooms.” 
Upon taking the helm in 2016, Ratkowski launched a Master 
Plan update. Designs for a terminal expansion were completed in 
2019—only to be abruptly shelved as global air travel temporarily 
plummeted beginning in spring 2020. 
Looking ahead to an expected post-COVID recovery, 
airport management knew FCA’s existing spaces could handle 
passenger volume comparable to that of 2015. A return to that 
level, leaders agreed, would trigger a revival of the expansion 
plans, though no one expected that to occur anytime soon. Their 
measured expectations quickly unraveled.
“By December of 2020, we were seeing those [2015] 
numbers,” Ratkowski recalls.
Accordingly, construction of FCA’s 
expansion kicked off in spring 2021.
Bigger, Better and On-Brand
Matt Dubbe, national design and market 
leader for aviation architecture at Mead & 
Hunt, came away with two design imperatives 
MATT DUBBE

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