Neither carrier ever returned, and the airport then began receiving service by commuter airlines operating much smaller aircraft.

On September 27, 2017, the Santa Fe City Council approved an expansion plan for the airport to better accommodate the current volume of airline service as well as future growth.

[7][8][9][10] An extension of Jaguar Road from NM 599 (the Santa Fe Bypass) exit #2 directly to the terminal is also planned for the future.

Santa Fe's first commercial airline service was by Mid Continent Air Express beginning in 1929 operating on a route from El Paso to Denver with stops at Albuquerque, New Mexico, Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico as well as Pueblo and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The route was replaced with Western Air Express in 1931 and again by Varney Speed Lines, the predecessor of Continental Airlines, in 1934.

[11] In 1936, the southwest operating division of Varney was acquired by Robert F. Six who in 1937 renamed the air carrier Continental Air Lines which then began operating Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior twin prop aircraft on a daily round trip routing of El Paso - Albuquerque - Santa Fe - Las Vegas, NM - Pueblo, CO - Colorado Springs - Denver.

[14] In 1950, Continental expanded its service by adding more stops along the El Paso to Denver route, including Las Cruces, Truth or Consequences, Socorro, and Raton in New Mexico and Trinidad in Colorado in addition to Santa Fe and the other aforementioned destinations.

[15] In 1955, Continental merged with Pioneer Air Lines and took over that carrier's service on the Albuquerque - Santa Fe - Clovis - Lubbock - Abilene - Ft. Worth - Dallas route.

[16] By 1963, Continental Airlines was growing rapidly with large jets and began transferring its route authority for its smaller cities to other carriers.

The El Paso - Denver route with all the intermediate stops, including Santa Fe, was transferred to Frontier Airlines (1950-1986), and the Albuquerque - Dallas route with all the intermediate stops went to Trans-Texas Airways, which resulted in Continental no longer serving the Santa Fe airport.

Trans World Airlines, (TWA), began Santa Fe service in 1948 by adding the city as a stop on its transcontinental mainline route using Douglas DC-3 aircraft.

By the mid-1960s, Frontier began operating Convair 580 turboprops from the airport nonstop to Denver and Albuquerque, with direct service to Phoenix, Tucson, and El Paso.

[22] In June 1972 Frontier (as well as Texas International Airlines) both ceased operating at Santa Fe citing unsafe runway conditions.

[23] Trans-Texas Airways changed its name to Texas International (TI) in 1969 and discontinued DC-9 jet service into Santa Fe by early 1970 but continued to serve the airport with the Convair 600's.

In June, 1972, both Texas International and Frontier were forced to suspend all flights citing unsafe runway conditions.

These carriers used a variety of commuter aircraft including Cessna 402's and Piper Navajo's on flights to Albuquerque and Denver.

Zia had served Santa Fe from 1974 through 1980, also operating flights to Farmington, New Mexico for a short time and had upgraded to Handley Page Jetstream propjet aircraft in 1979.

[29] Aspen Mountain Air served Santa Fe from 1997 through 1998 with Dornier 328's on behalf of American Airlines by reinstating nonstop flights to Dallas/Ft.

Great Lakes Aviation came to Santa Fe in 1998 by resuming the United Express flights to Denver after the Mesa Airlines contract expired.

Great Lakes also used Beechcraft 1900D aircraft and had increased their Denver service to as many as twelve flights per day but then lost their United Express designation in early 2002.

They continued to serve Santa Fe independently via their own identity until 2007 as no other United Express carriers had implemented service.

American Eagle announced the introduction of regional jet flights to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and LAX beginning in December 2007 as well.

A second daily flight to Phoenix was added in May, 2019 utilizing a Canadair CRJ-900 regional jet operated by Mesa Airlines.

This service was replaced by Trans States Airlines as United Express in summer, 2015 which also operated Embraer ERJ-145 regional jets.

Instead, due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, service was cut back to only one daily flight to Denver on SkyWest using the smaller 50-seat CRJ-200.

[1] For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2021, the airport had 57,300 aircraft operations, an average of 157 per day; of these 83% were general aviation, 6% were military, 6% commercial, and 5% air taxi.

[1][43] The data below lists annual total aircraft operations from 2003 to 2013 from the FAA's Air Traffic Activity System.