Nic Longo is living in the future.
From his offices on the third floor of a brand-new $68 million north concourse, the director of the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport has a perfect seat to witness the ongoing demolition of the terminal it replaced.
Frequent fliers these days will notice the new wood-accented waiting areas and a sleek new outpost of the Skinny Pancake. But Longo’s most excited about no longer being constrained by an old north terminal that couldn’t accommodate large modern aircraft and limited the services airlines were able to offer. The new terminal has roomy gates and can handle the larger passenger loads of bigger planes.
The airport — located in South Burlington but owned and governed by the City of Burlington — was able to fund its largest construction project in 30 years without taking on any debt. Plans for a new terminal had been years in the making when then-U.S. senator Patrick Leahy earmarked funding for the project in 2023 from his powerful perch on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Leahy’s last pork barrel paid for half of Project NexT, as the terminal project is called. The rest of the funds were cobbled together from Federal Aviation Administration and other grants. After Leahy’s retirement, the airport was rechristened to honor his efforts.
To Longo, the new terminal’s value is its flexibility. With upgraded jet bridges and more room for planes to maneuver, it can accommodate aircraft both large and small, however demand trends, as well as passenger streams that ebb and flow. It increases the airport’s appeal to both prospective fliers and, Longo hopes, airlines that might expand operations — or at least continue them.
This versatility, Longo said, will allow the airport to weather whatever headwinds the broader aviation industry might face: federal funding uncertainty, increasingly costly jet fuel, airline consolidation.
The airport is undeniably on an upswing in terms of passengers.
The airport is undeniably on an upswing in terms of passengers. This year, Longo said, it’s on track to have 755,000 departing passengers — close to the record 759,000 who flew from BTV in 2008, just prior to the Great Recession.
Burlington International is busy. While managing passenger flights, it also accommodates the Vermont Air National Guard. In addition, the airport provides essential infrastructure for electric plane manufacturer Beta Technologies. The growing company’s public offering last November has supercharged its expansion efforts.
The new terminal can better accommodate Beta’s planes, which can take off and land vertically, like helicopters. Beta not only provides revenue through its lease agreement but the air traffic it contributes helps the airport unlock more federal funding — the busier BTV is, the more money becomes available. Beta contributed $12 million in infrastructure funding that the airport wouldn’t have been able to get elsewhere, Longo said.
Longo said Beta’s use of BTV for the development of its electric fleet has made it the second-busiest airport in New England, behind Boston Logan International Airport, when measured by total takeoffs and landings. As Beta grows “even bigger, busier,” he said, so too will the airport.
Longo wants to convince prospective passengers to choose Burlington over Logan. Roughly 3 million potential fliers live within a two-hour drive of Burlington, according to Longo, and he wants as much of that market share as he can get. Consumer choices are driven by ticket prices, direct flight offerings, and the convenience of parking and security at BTV compared with larger airports, he noted.
Flying out of BTV last Thursday, Bob and Nancy Durand of Hardwick were happy to have avoided Logan. Breeze Airways offers a direct flight to Raleigh, N.C., where the Durands’ children moved in search of cheaper homes and better jobs after they graduated from Vermont colleges.
“The Burlington airport is so much better than Logan in terms of ease and cost,” Bob said.
BTV has other competitors, too: Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, Montréal Trudeau International Airport and Plattsburgh International Airport.
Plattsburgh, which offers three direct flights to Florida daily, remains focused on providing leisure travel at affordable prices for North Country families, Plattsburgh airport director Patrick Sharrow said. Airlines have been closely monitoring the downturn in the number of Canadians coming across the border to fly as the value of the Canadian dollar has declined, Sharrow said, and Plattsburgh has felt the effect.
Some Canadians have vowed to avoid the United States after President Donald Trump insulted the country and imposed tariffs. Canadian tourism in Vermont declined by nearly a third last year, according to the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development. At BTV, officials track Canadian fliers by counting Canadian license plates on parked cars, airport spokesperson Jeff Bartley said, cautioning that the method is inexact. The data show that roughly 10 percent of fliers out of Burlington come from Canada. Prior to the pandemic, that number was estimated to be in the 20 to 25 percent range.
For now, flights are mostly full, he claimed, so the airport isn’t concerned.
When United Airlines starts offering nonstop flights from BTV to Houston next month, the airport will have direct routes to 19 destinations — the most ever, though some routes are seasonal, according to Bartley. Airport officials are trying to persuade United to make its summer service to Denver year-round by pointing to strong commercial connections between the states, such as Colorado-based Vail Resorts’ ownership of three Vermont ski areas.
Longo is bullish on the airport’s future — it’s his job, after all — even when so much depends on outside factors. When the new terminal opened at the end of March, the airport was running a food drive for TSA workers who hadn’t been paid in weeks amid a Congressional standoff over Department of Homeland Security funding. They’re currently being paid and have since gotten some back pay.
The airport has no control over the airlines or ticket prices, either. Last week, United CEO Scott Kirby said the major airlines may need to increase ticket prices by up to 20 percent to offset rising jet fuel costs as a result of the war with Iran.
Longo said he’s not concerned. An analysis the airport conducted into consumer demand and the price of tickets and jet fuel concluded that the people who need to fly will do so regardless.
“Does it impact the ticket price? You bet it does,” Longo said. “But there’s no fluctuation in our passenger numbers.”
Ultimately, the airlines set ticket prices. The big three — Delta, United and American — don’t compete with each other, so passengers get a better deal when budget airlines are in the mix. At BTV, Breeze and, seasonally, Sun Country Airlines keep prices on popular routes in check. Even the withdrawal of a single budget airline can be consequential, such as when JetBlue ended its popular direct route between Burlington and New York City in 2023. The cost of an average flight to New York is now $100 higher than it was prior to JetBlue’s departure.
Longo is already looking ahead to the next phase of the airport’s expansion, which he calls the final step — a project focused on the south terminal. Longo hopes to put the project up for a bond vote for approval from Burlington voters in 2028 and expects the price tag to be somewhere near $80 million.
“We’re part of the solution, part of the change,” he said. “We’re impacting the entire state of Vermont by having the airport be this strong, and certainly we’re counting on just growing and growing and growing.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Upward Mobility? | Burlington International Airport’s new terminal will help it compete, officials say. Despite industry turbulence, BTV is experiencing lift.”
This article appears in April 29 • 2026.
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