Traveling out of the Sioux Falls Regional Airport anytime soon? Locals asked not to park there

The Sioux Falls Regional Airport is seeing the effects of a growing population, specifically in their parking spaces.

Right now the airport is asking any locals traveling in the near future to use rideshare services to get here instead of driving themselves.

Traveling on its own can be a very stressful process, but imagine pulling up to the airport to find no open parking spaces.

That's the problem Sioux Falls Regional Airport is experiencing.

"You know, our parking's gonna be at capacity or actually probably beyond capacity," says Dan Letellier, the Executive Director for the Sioux Falls Regional Airport.

As a temporary fix, they're asking for help from any locals who are traveling in the next 4-6 weeks.

"I never really thought I would encourage people to use Uber and Lyft, that's kind of the last thing I would encourage..."

"We're asking people, especially local travelers if they can consider getting a ride, maybe using Uber or Lyft. That'll take a bit of the pressure off."

Though the end of February into March is usually the busiest time of the year for the airport, in the first two months of this year they've already seen record passenger traffic.

"A lot of people on spring break or winter vacations or our snowbirds that are, they're gone for a couple of weeks at a time."

Another reason behind the increased traffic is more seats, flights and destinations are being offered.

"Additional seats available on Allegiant. Actually this week they go on two flights every day to Phoenix. A new service to Punta Gorda, Orlando. So, all that's driving more traffic."

But, plans are already in the works to create more spaces.

"We are embarking, actually going to be opening bids here in a couple of weeks for expansion of the economy lot that we had planned. So help is coming but not for the next, you know, month or so."

They're also in the early stages of designing a parking garage and that may go up within the next couple of years.