Missoula Airport to close to fixed‑wing traffic for 127‑hour runway rehab as $127 million terminal project nears completion

Missoula Montana Airport will be closed to all fixed‑wing aircraft for roughly 127 hours in September so crews can overlay the airport’s primary runway, replace approach lighting and perform other repairs, Tim Damro, deputy director of the Missoula County Airport Authority, said at City Club Missoula’s July forum.

The closure will allow crews to apply a three‑inch asphalt overlay, replace about 335 lights with LEDs, upgrade the approach lighting system to improve instrument approaches in fog, and perform deep maintenance across the newly opened terminal, Damro said. “There’s never a good time to shut down kind of our access to the outside world,” he said, but the airport opted for a single continuous closure to avoid “cold joints” and to produce a longer‑lasting pavement surface.

The runway rehabilitation project budget is about $20,000,000, covered primarily by federal discretionary funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with a small airport match, Damro said. Separately, the airport’s multi‑phase terminal expansion has a total project budget of about $127,000,000. Damro said the terminal work has been funded with airport revenues and that Phase 3 (additional gates,…