San Antonio International Airport officials made a flurry of announcements this week: from additional flights to an update on major renovations in the years to come.
Breeze Airways will return to SAT with three new destinations after it left the airport in 2022. Officials are also closing in on contractors for longer-term capital projects.
A new $1.4 billion terminal is currently being built and on Wednesday at a city council meeting, airport officials sketched out a vision for revitalizing its two existing terminals to improve passengers’ experience going through security and waiting for their flights.
Airport Director Jesus Saenz told city council members they have identified a contractor to lead the terminal renovation project: Houston-based architect Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (HOK).
“I’d love to show you all the renderings that we have of what it can look like,” Saenz said. “We don’t want to show you something that we haven’t fully vetted, so we’re working on doing the early design work for that.”
Now boarding for Raleigh, Memphis, Pensacola
Breeze Airways is adding three direct flights, with an additional indirect destination, to San Antonio.
Founded in 2021, the budget airline focuses on direct flights between secondary airports, bypassing larger travel hubs.
The three new nonstop destinations will be Memphis, Pensacola and Raleigh-Durham international airports. There are additional one-stop destinations that don’t require passengers to switch planes.
Travelers on Friday flights to Memphis would be able to stay on board and travel on to Raleigh-Durham, while those on Wednesday flights to Pensacola could do the same and arrive in Tampa.
Raleigh-Durham one-way flights start at $79 with service Thursday and Sunday beginning May 7.
Memphis and Pensacola flights will start at $49. The Memphis-bound flights will be on weekdays beginning on May 8. Flights to Pensacola will only be during the summer on Wednesdays and Saturdays starting on June 10.
SAT has seen contractions in flights and travelers recently. The airport is bringing back a seasonal route to Toronto this year, but lost service from JetBlue and German airline Condor in 2024 and 2025.
Saenz said SAT is still processing its 2025 data, but said several factors had impacted the airport’s travel load.
“We had a horrible winter storm. Last year, we had a 43-day government shutdown. We had some economic downturn across the entire industry,” Saenz said. “We’re finalizing our numbers for 2025 but we know we’re less than what we were in 2024.”
Redesigning Terminals A and B
Terminal A was built in 1984 and had at one point been considered for demolition as Terminal C, and its 18 new gates, were being built. Now officials are working to bring the older terminal up to date.
“As we build out the new Terminal C, all of those will be in sync with the [new] design standards. This is the effort to take Terminal A and Terminal B in that same direction, while upgrading and modernizing many elements,” he said.
Travelers have some basic needs, he added, including high quality restrooms, quick trips through security, good parking and room to stretch out near gates.
“There’s ticket counters all the way down the row when you’re in the major ticket hall. We probably weren’t going to need that many,” Assistant City Manager Jeff Coyle said. “If you reduce that footprint, you open up more space for concessions. Maybe the security checkpoint moves from where it is. It’s a pretty crowded space.”
“You have a lot of people filling up the hallways, congesting the corridors because there’s not enough seating so if we have fewer carriers operating out of there, you have more space to spread out to make the hold areas larger,” he added.
Coyle and Saenz said the airport has designated $200 million to upgrade Terminal A and $100 million to upgrade Terminal B. That money comes from rates paid for by airlines, who pre-approved efforts to upgrade the terminals.
That funding is part of SAT’s master plan, said Ana Flores, a senior public information officer for the airport.
“City Council approved the Terminal A and B improvements, including the project budgets, as part of the Airline Use and Lease Agreement authorized in September 2024, with funds also approved in the city budget,” Flores said in an email.
Saenz said SAT is working with airlines as it plans its upgrades. That includes Southwest Airlines, which lost a lawsuit against the city when it was not selected for inclusion in the new terminal.
Changes to runways
Part of the airport’s planned upgrades include improving its runways.
Right now, SAT uses two runways that intersect like a capital “T.” Officials want to turn one of those runways, the top of the “T,” into a taxiway. That runway, called 4-22, also has conflicts with the nearby Randolph Air Force Base.
“There’s this really elaborate dance they do every day to time planes taking off from Randolph to do pilot training and from SAT for commercial reasons,” Coyle said.
Saenz said the airport is considering hiring Kimley-Horn and Associates, an international design and engineering consultant with a local office, to help upgrade and extend a different runway.
That would give SAT two longer, parallel runways called 13L and 13R. Having two parallel runways means more planes could fly in and out at the same time and the airport could host larger jets capable of longer flights to destinations in Central Europe and Southeast Asia.
Construction at Stinson Municipal Airport
Stinson Municipal Airport located on the South Side hosts private and corporate jets, not commercial airliners, but is also undergoing some needed upgrades.
A 2023 master plan for the airport had projected steady growth in operations over the next decade.
The airport has hired a new airport manager, Jeffrey S. Tripp, and is also leasing land to Ocotillo Aviation, a hangar operator that has been at Stinson for almost 30 years.
One hangar is being constructed, but Ocotillo has leased land for two others, Tripp said in an email.
“The developer is constructing these hangars to meet a current demand to provide hangars for larger twin engine aircraft, turboprop and smaller corporate jets,” he wrote.
