FARMINGTON, N.M. – A partnership between an airline and an airport in the Four Corners is up in the air. That’s even after the airport made requested changes.

But what will it take for this partnership to land?

“One exacerbating factor that just shown up is that Boeing aircraft has a delay in the delivery of their new airplanes,” said Mike Lewi, a Four Corners Regional Airport manager.  

Boeing Company is now affecting partnerships beyond their own in the aircraft world and one right here in our state. 

The Four Corners Regional Airport in Farmington has been looking to partner with SkyWest Arline for quite some time. They even made major modifications to the airport to do so.

“The first visit was very interesting, they knew about the Farmington market, and they were very interested in the Farmington market,” said Lewis.

But when will SkyWest Airlines take off from Four Corners Regional Airport? That depends.

Lewis started the conversations with SkyWest back in 2017 after services stopped with Great Lakes Airlines. The airport had a list of changes to make to land SkyWest. 

“Our airfield is configured for smaller aircraft, and we need to upgrade the airfield to handle regional jets,” said Lewis.

The airport used $25 million in grants from the Federal Aviation Administration to start the overhaul. 

“We overhauled the terminal building, so it’s big enough to handle regional jets and to handle the upgraded services that TSA needs to do the screening,” said Lewis. 

That’s not all, in 2018 Lewis applied for a million dollar grant to bring in a new airline. 

“It is money that we can use to market an airline to help them get launched, in other words. If we have to subsidize them,” said Lewis. 

Through the millions in changes, COVID-19 hit. Then, there was a pilot shortage and now SkyWest is waiting for Boeing to deliver planes. 

“United for example, SkyWest’s big partner, planned on having all these deliveries this year that are not going to occur. So now they’re going to SkyWest and going, ‘Hey, we need your resources to help us through this issue,’” said Lewis. 

Lewis says the airport is in contact with SkyWest and still hopes to have SkyWest flights taking off from the Four Corners.