Traverse City’s Cherry Capital Airport (TVC) has grown accustomed to breaking records in recent years, but even CEO Kevin Klein is surprised by how thoroughly the airport just obliterated its previous high water mark for the spring break travel season.

“To give you some context, 2024 was our record year prior, for the spring break period,” Klein tells The Ticker. “In 2024, we had 45,221 passengers in March. In 2025, we had 58,110 passengers in March. It was a 28.5 percent increase.”

In fact, so many people were flying out of TVC for spring break this year that the airport ran out of parking – not just in its regular short-term and long-term lots, but also in its 80-spot overflow lot.

“The next step after that was to take back some parking spaces that are used for the car rental storage lot,” Klein says – a move that netted an extra 150 spaces for passenger parking. “And that was enough capacity,” he adds. “We used about 40 percent of those spaces to get through the spring break time.”

TVC wasn’t expecting to be running short on parking this soon. Just three years ago, the airport added 422 new parking spaces across its campus – a 40 percent increase, according to Klein. “We thought that would last us awhile,” he says. “But with growing numbers over the last several years, continuing to set records, we’ve really outpaced that additional parking.”

The spring break rush prompted TVC to fast-track a parking expansion plan. At a meeting last week, the airport board approved a contract with Prein&Newhof to design a new 500-space lot. The parking lot will be built north of Costco on the east side of Fly Don’t Drive, with shuttle service to the terminal for passengers who park there. While Klein says TVC considered a parking garage rather than a surface lot, that option ultimately proved cost prohibitive.

“We learned that the difference between a parking garage and surface parking lot is that parking garage costs about $60,000 per space to build, while a surface lot is $4,500 to $5,000,” Klein shares.

Under the contract with Prein&Newhof, the firm will deliver a design for the project by mid-summer. “Then we’ll go out to bid, and hopefully we can do some construction this fall to get that lot built,” Klein says. The new lot will bring TVC’s total parking capacity to over 1,900 spots.

While weather could be one reason for Traverse City’s bigger-than-average spring break exodus this year – Klein says long, cold, snowy winters like 2025’s tend to trigger busier spring break periods at TVC – there’s another more holistic reason for the record March.

“We just have more opportunities to travel this year,” Klein explains. “American Airlines now has year-round non-stop service to Charlotte, so adding that daily service has provided a big boost to our numbers. Allegiant had a direct flight to Fort Lauderdale, and added additional sections during spring break to go to Tampa-St. Pete and Orlando-Sanford. Allegiant also brought the Phoenix-Mesa direct flight back into rotation on March 6; that route has typically started in June. And United and Delta have larger aircraft on routes this year, respectively. With all of that, we've had more seats in the market this spring than we've had in the past.”

Now, with TVC’s springtime traffic outperforming all prior metrics, Klein predicts more and more of the airport’s direct flights will expand service outside of the peak summer season.

“Just look at Charlotte,” Klein says. “When Charlotte started, it was a weekend-only service in the summertime. Then it went to daily in the summertime. And then it started to expand out from summer into early June, late May, and late September. And this year, for the first time, we’ve had that Charlotte route operating year-round.”

Which of TVC’s direct flights could follow in the footsteps of Allegiant’s Charlotte route?

“We're starting to see routes like Dallas and Denver pushing into the October timeframe,” Klein notes. “Denver's even looking at going into November this year, and that flight is also starting a whole month earlier this year; it will be coming online the first week of May. So, those two are routes to watch.”

Of course, it’s not just the off-season that’s seeing growth at TVC. Last year, the airport logged a record 787,114 passengers, up 12.3 percent from 2023, which itself was a record-breaking year with 700,699 passengers. July 2024 currently holds the record as the busiest month in TVC history (124,000 passengers), and last year also saw the airport’s biggest June, August, and September numbers

Klein is expecting the overall growth trend to continue in 2025, even amidst significant uncertainty about how Trump Administration policies will affect travel and tourism and the economy in general.

“One of the reasons I’m expecting a great summer is forward-looking seats,” Klein explains. “We are looking at about a 37 percent increase in seats in our market for this summer compared to last summer. So, again, there are just more opportunities to travel.”

How long can TVC keep hitting double-digit growth figures? Klein isn’t sure, but he views the airport’s recent streak of record-breaking achievements as a sign that airlines are finally paying attention to the Traverse City market.

“I think our market has always been underserved by the airlines,” Klein concludes. “With the addition of all these new seats, the airlines are finally serving the passengers that would have normally made the choice to travel with us. And so, instead of what we've seen in the past, where people might drive down to Grand Rapids, Detroit, or even Chicago to travel – especially for something like spring break – now, they're being captured here. I think that makes a big difference.”