Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to start Jan. 23. With an average of about 140,000 in-person attendees over the past two years arriving for hundreds of screenings, Heber Valley Airport is ready for a projected increase of activity toward the end of the month.Their strategy, according to Heber Valley Airport Manager Travis Biggs, is to plan for business as usual.“We can handle it,” Biggs said. “It’s just a lot more drop-offs and pickups from arrivals and departures.”Biggs said that Sundance is just another month that trends higher for airport arrivals and departures. According to Biggs’ assistant Adam Bunker, Heber Valley Airport saw about 1,659 arrivals in January, 2024. “During Sundance, especially if the snow is good and there’s a good ski season, we get a lot more,” Biggs said. According to Flightaware.com, the Heber Valley Airport generally sees a spike in arrivals and departures between July and November, and then again at the start of the year. Arrivals and departures in 2024 were higher than 2023 overall with a peak of 70 incoming and outgoing aircrafts in October 2024 and a peak of 54 aircraft arrivals and departures on Dec. 31, 2023. Credit: Photo courtesy of Flightaware.comNumbers were unusually low in January 2023 with about 1,030 arrivals. Heber City Airport Advisory Board Chairperson Jason Talley said that the amount of traffic Heber Valley Airport sees is largely dependent on the weather. At Heber City’s airport, planes can land using their instruments even when there’s cloud cover. On a blue sky day, Talley said the instrument approach to land in Heber Valley is fairly high, meaning that there would be almost 2,000 feet of visibility between the runway and the bottom of the clouds.“If there’s clouds or if there’s snow or the runway has ice on it, that can drastically impact the amount of traffic that comes into Heber,” Talley said. “And then you’ll have aircraft that will go to Salt Lake or Provo or some of the other surrounding airports instead of coming here. Sometimes that traffic occurs anyway, just because it’s a lot less expensive to land at those airports.”In December, Heber City Council approved changes including increased landing fees, new parking costs, and higher rent for hangars, making it more expensive to land at the Heber Valley Airport.Now, renting a hangar costs $2,000 per month. A $100 parking fee per vehicle per month has also been implemented alongside a permit fee. Aircraft offering commercial flights will face a fee ranging from $500 to $2,000. And, landing at the Heber airport has gone up by a dollar per 1,000 pounds of the aircraft’s weight. That’s all to cushion the blow of the $4.4 million needed for capital improvements over the next 20 years. Talley said that some of the changes include safety features like the realignment of the airport’s runway and tearing down a row of hangars that’s next to a current taxiway. “They’re all changes that need to be made just because the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has updated what the airport design should look like from 30 years ago,” Talley said. Biggs said, as it stands, the Heber Airport can handle “10 times more aircraft than we’ve ever received on a runway.”During Sundance, Biggs said the airport has seen arrivals from celebrities like Adam Sandler and Nicolas Cage, but it’s not as common as one might think. Over the past few years, Biggs said an increase in departures and arrivals coincides with “more wealthy individuals that move” to the Heber Valley. “As we’ve had an increase in the value of homes, that’s what’s causing the increase in traffic,” Biggs said. “It’s not a huge increase, but it’s definitely noticeable.”The post Heber Valley Airport says it’s business as usual for Sundance appeared first on Park Record.