UPDATE: Denver officials on Thursday announced the nonstop flight will be to Paris. Click here for more.
Denver’s run of landing new international flights may not be over just yet.
Colorado Economic Development Commission members today approved the offering of as much as $500,000 in incentives to aid Denver officials in landing a nonstop flight to an unnamed European destination that they said would create an economic impact of some $12 million annually.
GALLERY: Above, a look at the 24 international destinations now served from DIA.
While EDC and Denver International Airport officials were careful at a meeting not to say what the destination would be, Michelle Hadwiger, deputy director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, said Denver currently is the largest U.S. market without nonstop service to this particular airport.
The announcement of a potential new transatlantic route comes after a busy three months in which DIA officials secured a new route to London on Norwegian Air, a direct flight to Panama via Copa and a nonstop to Zurich, Switzerland on DIA newcomer Edelweiss airline.
Also, Frontier Airlines announced Tuesday that it will add 21 new destinations in the U.S. and Canada from DIA over the next 12 months.
Ever since United Airlines began flying nonstop from DIA to Tokyo in June 2013, airport officials have fielded a growing stream of interest from airlines about launching international routes.
International travel out of the airport has grown 40 percent in that time — the eighth-fastest level of growth among the 50 largest airports in the U.S., said Laura Jackson, DIA senior director of air-service development and aviation research.
“New flights tend to fuel new flights,” Jackson told the EDC. “Airlines look at what’s going on.”
This unidentified newest flight would launch in the spring of 2018 and would make two trips a week, Jackson and Hadwiger said. Flown on a Boeing 787, it would carry a maximum load of 344 passengers — 309 in economy seats and another 35 in premium seating.
The flight, if the airline accepts the money, is likely to create 350 new jobs, some directly involved with the route and others affiliated with the increase in tourism it is expected to generate.
The state incentives will rise from $400,000 over two years for marketing the flight to $500,000 if the airline expands its schedule to additional flights, Hadwiger said. They will be coupled with $4.57 million in operational offsets and marketing support offered by DIA, $104,000 put up by the Colorado Tourism Office and $98,000 put forward by Visit Denver.
State and city officials have not said when a decision by the unnamed airline is expected.
In an informal Denver Business Journal Pulse poll now underway, readers are being asked: "What should be DIA's next international nonstop destination?"
With 229 responses so far, the No. 1 choice by 28 percent of respondents is Paris, followed by 17 percent for "an Australian or New Zealand city" and 13 percent for Rome.
