City of Billings approves creation of airport authority

For the first time in its 98-year history, the Billings Logan International Airport is on its way to operating independently of its namesake city.

Tuesday night, following a presentation from Billings Aviation and Transit Director Jeff Roach and aviation consulting firm Stephen Baldwin and Associates, City Council approved the creation of an independent governmental authority to run the city’s airport.

Under this model, ownership of the physical airport structure and its assets would be transferred to the newly created authority and they would be tasked with running the airport.

The city has held direct operational oversight of the airport since its May 1928 opening, but in recent years it's become the only commercial service airport in Montana still under municipal control.

A long-discussed issue, City Council first took action last fall by creating an Airport Governance Advisory Committee and hiring the consulting firm to study the proposal’s feasibility.

Tuesday night, Roach and a representative from the consulting firm presented their findings to the council, ultimately recommending they approve the creation of an independent authority.

“It’s going to align the governing model with best practices nationwide promoting competition with those other airports both in the state and nationally,” the consulting representative said. “It’s also going to allow the airport to function as closely as possible to a private business entity model without comprising transparency or public accountability.”

In 2025, Billings’ airport counted one million total passengers for the first time in its history. The previous year it was ranked as the fourth busiest in the state by the Federal Aviation Administration behind Bozeman, Missoula and Kalispell.

During their presentation the pair also highlighted that a transfer of authority would not cost the city any money.

“The airport is self-sufficient and there is no reason to believe at any time in the future that it will not be self-sufficient,” Roach said in response to a question from Mark Nicholson regarding the financial situation of the airport and the need for potential future taxpayer support.

Council members generally received the presentation well but Roy Neese and Denis Pitman both criticized the consulting firm for not engaging with more Billings residents or front-line airport employees during their information gathering process.

“One of the things you talked about was that you had reached out to stakeholders, but within that I didn’t see the public in general, you know going to task forces and explaining this process to the employees,” Pitman said.

To try and allow more time for the public and council members to weigh the proposal, Pitman introduced an amendment to delay any vote on the airport authority until June 8, but it ultimately failed.

As Tuesday night’s vote was procedural, council only approved the creation of an authority, allowing the planning process to go ahead. Moving forward all parties involved will still need to decide how the makeup and governance structure of an independent authority would look.

Roach and the consulting representative told council members Billings could look to partner with other local governmental entities to create a regional authority, or they could forge ahead on their own and create a municipal authority.

In practice, this would only really affect the makeup of the airport authority board. If a regional model is selected, all involved local governments would likely be allowed to appoint at least one member to the board while if a municipal model is selected only the city would be able to do so.

While the issue was not discussed too deeply, council members indicated they would to prefer a municipal model, especially Nicholson who said, “I’ll be flatfooted. I don’t want the county commissioners to be appointing people to this board.”

Moving forward, all parties involved in the process will start to decide what the airport authority will look like and any changes to the airport’s current governance structure must be approved by the FAA.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the city of Billings will not retain ownership of the physical airport structure upon the creation of an independent airport authority.