Myrtle Beach airport officials share details on $100M expansion project

Myrtle Beach International Airport is getting some upgrades.

Within the next three years, travelers coming into MYR will see improvements such as new double-decker gates with outside seating, more parking and ticket counters, additional jet fuel tanks, a rental car canopy and a new TSA checkpoint.

The overall cost of the expansion is nearly $100 million.

MYR’s Ryan Betcher said the expansion plans were in the works pre-pandemic but they were put on hold as the economy recovered. However, after a record-breaking year for passengers in 2021, the need for the expansion couldn’t wait.

“It was an astronomical year of growth for the airport,” Betcher said. “We were seeing numbers we had never seen before.”

Last year, MYR saw 3.2 million passengers, with more than half a million passengers coming in and out of the airport in July – a state record.

“We’re trending up,” Betcher said of the more than 1 million passengers as of this May. “What we’re expecting is a comparable level of traffic that we saw in 2021.”

The designs for the gate expansion are in preliminary stages with expectations of changes being made. But for now, the plans show busting out the Concourse A wall and adding a “hammerhead” design — allowing for at least six planes to park at a single terminal. The plans include outdoor seating on the upper floor so passengers can dine, talk or gather surrounded by planes.

“We do need more gate capacity, especially during those peak summer travel periods,” Betcher said. “Specifically on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.”

Betcher said the new gates will bring jobs: construction jobs initially and later service jobs for different airlines and vendors. However, stopped short of estimating how many jobs would be tied to the expansion.

This series of projects also includes a new security checkpoint with up to four processing lanes and an additional ticket counter. Betcher estimates the cost of these projects to be $10 million.