ALAMOSA — On May 1 San Luis Valley residents will no longer be able to fly to Albuquerque International Sunport. They will, however, have more chances to fly to Denver. The United States Department of Transportation approved Boutique Air's request to alter its service at the San Luis Valley Regional Airport after the airport completed a market study.

"A recent air service market analysis completed by Sixel Consulting revealed significant demand for passenger flights to Denver International Airport (DIA)," said SLV Regional Airport Manager Dustin Allinger in a press release. "Out of the nearly 260,000/year passengers from our service area the SLV airport is only serving 4.8 percent, with 77.6 percent driving to DIA."

Right now the airport has 18 round-trip flights to DIA and six to Albuquerque. Yet the plane to Albuquerque was 45 percent full on average while Denver flights were 80 percent full. Next month all 24 flights will be to and from DIA.

Currently, flight number 565 departs for Albuquerque from Alamosa at 12:30 p.m. and arrives back in Alamosa as flight number 566 at 8:10 p.m. every day except for Saturday.

At the beginning of May flight number 575 will head to Denver at 1:05 p.m. and flight number 576 will touch down in Alamosa at 3:50 p.m. six days a week.

The extra leg allows passengers to fly earlier in the day, changing the arrival and departure times for two other round-trip flights. Visit boutiqueair.com for a complete schedule.