ThunderWolves football team contributes to more passengers at Pueblo airport

The number of passengers using Pueblo Memorial Airport to fly out of the city is going up in December, and it’s not only because of holiday travel.

Aviation director Mark Lovin said he expects the number of passengers flying out to double from last month.

He also expects December to be the busiest month since Pueblo Memorial switched to SkyWest in April.

Lovin contributes the high number not only to holiday traveling but also the CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves winning the national championship.

“In this case, since there were two playoff games and then a championship game, that resulted in almost a doubling in airplane passengers at the airport for December,” he said.

Lovin said since the number of passengers is going up, the airport will switch from 30 seat planes to 50 starting Feb. 1.