EVERETT — Paine Field may not have a large flight schedule, but that didn’t stop it from receiving one of the highest rankings in a list of the top airports in the U.S.
In its recently published list of the best airports in U.S., The Washington Post named the Everett airport the fifth-best in the U.S. The ranking put Paine Field ahead of much larger airports in The Post’s top 10, including Detroit, Indianapolis and Salt Lake City.
In the story published June 26, Portland International Airport in Oregon was named No. 1 while Seattle-Tacoma International Airport did not make the list.
Post reporters analyzed 2024 data from 450 airports, including wait times to get through TSA security, ease of getting to the airport and the results of a survey of several thousand of its readers to come up with the 50 top airports.
The Post said of Paine Field: “It’s easy to mistake the terminal at this small airport north of Seattle as an exclusive private club.”
“Grab a bellman cart for your bags and roll them into the lobby that feels more like a posh hotel than an airport terminal,” it went on.
It detailed the luxury feel of the passenger terminal with its couches, lounge chairs and two fireplaces.
Edward Russell, one of the reporters who wrote the best airports story, said the terminal feels like an airport lounge, but without an entry fee.
The Washington Post survey examined airports with at least 1,000 flights a year, so Russell said Paine’s limited number of flights wasn’t a factor in its designation.
The Paine Field flight schedule is as small as nine departures on some days, but that didn’t matter on Thursday to Karen Petersen, an educational consultant. One of those flights was going to San Francisco, where she was attending a conference.
She had just finished eating a chai pudding and a pastry from Beecher’s Homemade Cheese Cafe, an offshoot of the original restaurant at Pike Place Market.
Petersen said she went through TSA security in a matter of minutes, the food was great, the terminal had comfy seats and her commute from her home in Woodinville was an easy 20 minutes.
“I feel giddy and happy,” said Petersen of her Paine Field experience.
She did wish the terminal had computer pods to make it comfortable to work on her laptop, like at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Her biggest complaint: “They need more flights,” she said.
Too many times, Petersen said she has to make the long journey to Sea-Tac airport, an hour commute on good days, and deal with long security lines at the crowded airport.
Peterson said she travels to educational conferences across the U.S., and Paine only serves limited destinations with direct flights — all on the West Coast.
Thursday was Gary Backenstose’s first time flying out of Paine Field.
The retiree said the smallness and inviting feel of the terminal relaxed him as he got ready to board the flight Thursday to San Francisco to visit relatives.
“Normally, I am anxious about flying,” he said.
Brett Smith, the CEO of Propeller Airports, the owner of the privately owned passenger terminal at Paine, said more flights will be departing soon, with an airport plan to add more gates and more airlines in the not-too-distant future.
“There are certain things that I am not at liberty to discuss, but there are plans to expand, and we do plan on expanding,” he said.
Alaska Airlines, the primary carrier at Paine Field, was joined by Frontier Airlines on June 2, which began three times a week service to Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Passenger service began at Paine Field in March 2019, and the airport saw more than 1 million in its first year of operation.
Smith said Propeller was working on design plans for an expansion right before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down air travel and changed the world.
After the pandemic, Alaska reduced its flight schedule by around a third at Paine, and a second carrier, United Airlines, pulled out altogether.
In 2024, 580,000 travelers used the airport, but Smith expects that number will go up by 15% in 2025.
Ray Lane, a spokesman for Alaska Airlines, said when the carrier began serving Paine Field in 2019, its focus was business travelers with flights to markets such as Portland, Spokane and Salt Lake City.
“When we restored capacity following the pandemic, we made adjustments that matched guest demand, which meant tilting toward primarily leisure travel,” he said.
Alaska no longer serves Portland, Spokane and Salt Lake City from Paine and has put its emphasis on flights to California, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Hawaii.
“We’ll continue to invest in PAE as part of our long-term plans,” Lane said. “We’re excited about the results we’ve seen over the past year as our collection of destinations has stabilized and had time to mature.”
Smith said that Paine Field has the room to grow flights while SeaTac is at its passenger capacity.
Sea-Tac handled a record 52.6 million passengers in 2024, and airport officials have said it has reached its design capacity.
An expansion project is in the works with more gates, but Smith said SeaTac’s passenger numbers are also projected to continue to increase.
“You can only fit so many people in Sea-Tac, and then you can’t, and then it’s over, ” he said.
A Paine Field master plan estimates 4 million passengers could use the airport by 2040, a major increase from today, but just a fraction of the passengers SeaTac handles.
Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers signed an executive order on May 22 aimed at expanding the terminal and increasing air service at Paine Field Airport.
The order creates a much larger vision for the airport.
Somer’s order instructs county departments to begin the planning process for expanding roads, runways and other airport improvements in a long-range project estimated in 2024 to cost around $300 million.
But since the passenger terminal is run by Propeller Airports, it will be up to the company owned by investment giant BlackRock to make the final decision on the expansion of the passenger terminal.
Another fan of the airport since it opened is Catharine Hahn, the former travel editor of the Los Angeles Times.
She said Paine Field is her airport of choice when she makes the journey from her home in the Los Angeles area to visit family members in Snohomish.
“It’s a great way to start your time away, your vacation as it were,” she said of the ease of walking through the small terminal and being met curbside by her relatives. “It just feels like being wrapped up in a warm embrace.”
Hahn compared that to meeting family members outside of SeaTac.
“I’ve spent many an unhappy hour waiting for people to get through the traffic and the traffic circle to pick me up,” she said.
Randy Diamond: 425-339-3097; randy.diamond@heraldnet.com.
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