ESCANABA — The Delta County Airport will soon offer nighttime flights, allowing travelers leave on flights in the early morning hours and return to Escanaba the same day. The change, which was announced Tuesday during the Delta County Board of Commissioners meeting, is expected to take place in December.

“Basically, we’ll have a very early morning flight during the week where business travelers can go out and arrive in Detroit and take care of business and go on to connections; the Minneapolis flights, which head out to the west coast, will occur in the afternoon; and then late in the evening that Detroit flight will return. So theoretically, we could have business travelers departing from here in the morning and return in the evening,” said Robert Ranstadler, airport manager.

Ranstadler went on to say the changes would help the community and boost the number of travelers flying at the airport. He said reestablishing night flights has been one of his goals since he first took over at the airport in October of 2023.

“You can look at the historical data. When the airport has had that flight schedule how many more passengers are actually able to go out of here. It’s substantial,” said County Commissioner Matt Jensen. “And our airport manager has been working very (diligently) towards that and the hope was that we could get there by summer. So to be able to get there now in December is actually going to be a huge boost for us as we move forward with the airport.”