Devils Lake Airport hits record passengers

DEVILS LAKE, N.D. (AP) — The airport in Devils Lake is seeing a record high number of passengers this year.

Airport manager John Nord says the facility is on track to hit 6,500 boardings. But he would like that number to increase by 3,500.

The facility currently gets $150,000 a year in federal funds for improvement projects. The assistance, however, jumps to $1 million if the facility hits 10,000 boardings.

Nord says the airport’s crosswind runway is in dire need of being milled and resurfaced. He says that project would cost around $2 million.

Nord says that before 2016, the airport had never seen more than 600 boardings in a given month. That changed in February, when it saw 612 boardingss, up from 307 in 2015.