The Rocky spoke with DIA Aviation Manager Kim Day on Wednesday about the airport's current challenges and how it's preparing for the future in an uncertain environment.

1. On your expectations for capacity and traffic at DIA this year:

Based on the schedules published right now, capacity in June is projected to be 7.5 percent below 2008. It's not like it falls off a cliff, though. There's a very gradual decline in capacity.

I'd say, based on those projections, that passenger traffic will be down 5 percent in June over June of last year, though that's just a guess.

We think there will be a bit of a downturn, but we don't think it will be horrific for us.

2. On the ability to handle growth in the near-term:

There are gates that probably don't have as high a utilization as they could have, so we still have room to grow even if we didn't add gates.

Theoretically, almost every airline here could increase (the amount of flights they operate at each gate).

The only exception with that is Southwest. If they really wanted to do another expansion they'd need another gate.

3. On the possibility of travel demand falling precipitously:

We are well aware of that. Probably for the last six months we've been doing a whole series of contingency planning exercises, looking at gate allocations and what happens to us financially.

We're trying to be very prudent with how we spend our money, deferring what we can, trying not to make decisions that will make things more expensive in the long-run.

We are in constant contact with our major carriers. We are sharing with them our plans, asking them for input.

4. On DIA adding more gates down the road:

I think we are to the point where we could pull the trigger and go build 10 gates.

We are in a position where we are going to wait until we're firmly convinced that we are going to need them. It would be absurd to build gates and then have airlines reduce capacity even more.