Arizona Airports Preparing for Super Bowl LVII
AZ – NFL Super Bowl LVII will be held Sunday, February 12th at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, and airports within the area are already preparing for this event that will drive an influx of commercial and private jet traffic to the airports.
New construction at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix hopes to make it easier for all the fans coming to the Valley or the game. They expect even more fans this year because the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the Barrett Jackson car auction are happening the same weekend as the football game. Eight new gates were opened on concourse D in Terminal 4 back in June. There will also be new restaurants and shops. McLister says staffing has improved over the last few months. They don’t expect to be short of workers by February.
The biggest change is two new stops that were added to the Sky Train. West of the terminals, there will be a 24th Street stop. That is a new building you can see from I-10. It’s about two miles west of the airport. People can park there, be picked up, or call a ride share for a lift home.
Scottsdale Airport received more than $5.4 million in grants from the FAA to improve safety and capacity in a matter of months. Most of the money will go towards solving the airport’s bottleneck problem. According to the airport, the mix of business jets and smaller planes can cause a backup to depart. One specific project will reconstruct a portion of the taxiway and taxiway connectors to current federal safety standards. It’s also designed to allow more space for the aircraft and allows the air traffic control tower to clear aircraft for departure.
Plans are underway at Phoenix’s Deer Valley Airport to add more space for private jets. The goal is to have a new corporate hangar built in time for the Super Bowl. Deer Valley is a general aviation airport. That means it does not handle passengers on commercial airlines—instead, it’s used for private aviation — from small planes to corporate jets. Cutter Aviation is the only fixed base operator in Deer Valley. When there are large events like the Super Bowl, Cutter provides fueling and other services, like rental cars.
The company recently broke ground on a 60,000-square-foot hangar that can hold a handful of large aircraft or about a dozen small planes. Cutter said the second phase plans will include a nearly identical structure on the opposite side of the terminal.
This will be the fourth time Arizona will host the Super Bowl. The last time was in 2015 when the state saw a $720 million economic impact directly related to that year’s game. Economists project this season’s Super Bowl LVII will exceed that.