Tulsa Riverside Airport Expecting Surge In Private Plane Traffic For Tournament

Wednesday, air traffic picked up at Tulsa's Riverside Airport as more fans and spectators flew into Tulsa for the PGA Championship.

Crews at the airport said they know how to handle the additional traffic.

“Just kind of coordinating who is going to be doing what, what we would expect and the contingency plans that have as areas start filling up with aircraft where we’re going to start stacking more and more planes on down the line," said Austin Wheeler.

Wheeler said 80 golfers flew into the airport on Sunday and throughout the week they've mostly seen fans and spectators. 

“Each day I think more and more are showing up to stay, but we also have a pretty good number of fans that will just fly in for the day and then in the evening fly back out," said Wheeler.

He said the biggest challenge is not knowing how many planes to expect each day or how long they'll be there. Wheeler said most of the jets that landed drop off the passengers and then leave. 

“Which is really beneficial to us. We’re not having to create space for them to stay. It’s really just you know an hour at most that they’re sitting here and then they’re on to another. That’s going to be the challenge on Sunday is all these planes that come back to pick up passengers," said Wheeler.

He expects to see two or three jets taking off every 10 minutes Sunday evening. 

“There will be a lot of planes stacked and staged here ready to pick up passengers that are coming from the tournament as things start wrapping up there we expect a lot of the players as well as fans to come over here to depart," said Wheeler.