Part One: Salina Regional Airport Has Become One of the City’s Biggest Economic Engines
If you only think about the Salina Regional Airport when you see a United jet on the tarmac, you are missing the bigger picture. After digging through the latest airport impact study, Airport Authority materials and city development documents, one thing stands out: the airport has become one of the biggest engines behind Salina’s economy, business footprint and growth potential. The Salina Airport Authority says it has managed the airport and Airport Industrial Center since 1965 on a 2,900-acre site at the former Schilling Air Force Base. It also says Salina Regional is the only commercial service airport serving Saline County and a 24-county area in north-central Kansas, with United providing daily service to Chicago, Denver and Houston. On top of that, the airport handles more than 75,000 aircraft operations a year and more than 2 million gallons of fuel sales annually through its fixed-base operator.
What makes the airport matter so much to Salina is everything built around it. The Airport Authority says the Airport Industrial Center is now home to more than 130 businesses and organizations, with more than 80 direct tenants. That means the airport is not just a transportation asset. It is also a business district, a logistics base, an industrial park and a recruiting tool all rolled into one.
The numbers behind that footprint are hard to ignore. The 2025 economic impact study found that the full airport-industrial complex, including private businesses, military units, public institutions and other tenants, generated $1.62 billion in economic activity in 2024 and supported 12,376 jobs. That works out to about 41.4% of all economic activity in Saline County and 31.0% of county employment. For one part of one city to account for that much of the local economy is not normal. It is a sign that the airport has become central to how Salina works.
Even more striking is the private-business side alone. The study found private businesses at the airport and industrial center generated $1.55 billion in economic activity and supported 8,700 jobs in 2024. The report also noted those businesses accounted for 39.6% of total economic activity in Saline County, while describing them as “some of the most productive jobs in Saline County.” That is the kind of line that tells you this is not just about volume. It is about the quality of the work and the scale of the output coming out of the airport area.
And a lot of that impact comes right back into Salina neighborhoods. The study found that 45.5% of all employees tied to the airport-industrial complex live inside Salina city limits. Looking at private businesses alone, the figure was 46.1%. In other words, a huge share of the paycheck base tied to the airport is not going somewhere else. It is landing in Salina households, helping support homeownership, consumer spending and day-to-day life across the city.
The airport also brings in dollars from outside Salina. In an addendum to the study, the Docking Institute surveyed Chamber-member businesses and found that even with a small sample, incoming business travelers tied to Salina’s commercial air service spent $437,230 in outside dollars locally on things like lodging, meals and rental vehicles. That is not a massive tourism headline. It is something more useful: proof that the airport helps pull outside money into Salina in a direct and measurable way.