Northwest Arkansas airport to celebrate 25th anniversary

BENTONVILLE — Northwest Arkansas National Airport is about to turn 25 years old. Almost a million people are expected to board flights there this year, bound for destinations across the country and around the world.

But building a new airport in the middle of nowhere Arkansas in the 1990s was never guaranteed.

“One of the things that I am most proud of is the collective pride that the people in the whole region have about the success of XNA,” said Scott Van Laningham, who was the airport’s first CEO. “It’s easy to forget that there was no guarantee that it was going to be successful.”

The region and its various cities had to be sold on the idea of one airport to serve the entire area. John Stossel, a reporter on the ABC news program “20/20,” labeled the project a “boondoggle,” saying it was railroaded through the FAA by such powerful corporate interests as Tyson Foods and Walmart. He called them “freeloaders” on the federal government’s dime.

“When it came up and there was banjo music in the background and there was a sign that said Highfilll, population 83, I went, ‘Oh, this is not going to be good,’” Van Laningham said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, then sought a federal Government Accounting Office audit of grants used to build the facility in what had been a cow pasture in then-President Bill Clinton’s home state.

McCain thought the airport wasn’t necessary and that its approval was politically motivated.

“It’s kind of weird, but we were just about to do the first financing on the airport and

everything got put on hold because of that, because of the “‘20/20’ piece,” Van Laningham said.

The GAO did a thorough review of the situation and came back with a report that said all the rules and regulations were followed, so there was nothing improper and it was not a boondoggle.

“They were just wrong. There was a genuine need for a new facility,” said Van Laningham, who served as CEO for more than 20 years. “The success demonstrated that, and they were proven wrong.”

According to Van Laningham, the negative attention actually ended up being helpful.

“It was very painful at the time, but looking in hindsight, that made it easier then to sell the financing. It was still a big, tough sell and folks forget that we were tying to sell $79.5 million worth of airport bonds, and we didn’t have any revenue stream,” Van Laningham said.

“This was before we ever opened, and it was Alice Walton and her firm who stepped up and made it happen. But for that, no telling what would have happened. That made it all possible.”

In 1999, the Airport Authority Board of Directors named the airport terminal the Alice L. Walton Terminal Building.

Uvalde Lindsey, initial executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Council, said the council was formed in 1989 with two goals.

“Its vision was to build an airport and get a four-lane highway on the interstate highway system,” Lindsey said. “Those were the two things we were charged to work on, and we accomplished both.”

It was only the third new airport to be built in 40 years, after Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver.

“Nobody knows how to build an airport, so we started from scratch. We hired the best people that we could find from all over the country to help us try to plan it and to control the costs because we didn’t have any money,” Lindsey said.

“And we built it according to the Federal Aviation Administration specifications and rules and regulations to make it all work and make it all come together on time and on budget if we could.”

Money was short when the airport opened, but every time something was needed, someone stepped up, according to Kelly Johnson, the first airport manager.

“The worst of it was worrying about the money, how the money was going to come in and what we were gonna do there. It was challenging in the beginning because there wasn’t much cash flow,” Johnson said.

“So we started with a really skinny staff, we got things from surplus. Like we needed a set of air stairs, I remember going to Barksdale (Air Force Base) in Louisiana and picking out a set of used air stairs. Somebody donated getting them trucked up here, the local vo-tech school rewired them for us and then painted them for us. My husband used to come up and mow the grass. He’d bring a mower from home.”

Efforts to build a new regional airport in Northwest Arkansas began back in the 1950s, but weren’t successful. The final effort began with a telephone call from the late Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, to then-Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt. Walton and Hammerschmidt discussed what steps would need to be taken to evaluate the possible construction of an airport.

In 1990, the Northwest Arkansas Council, a private, nonprofit organization, was formed and Alice Walton was elected as its first chairwoman. Under Walton’s leadership and direction, the council launched the effort that led to the creation of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport Authority.

Bentonville, Fayetteville, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Springdale, along with Benton and Washington counties, created the authority as a separate public entity to investigate the feasibility of building a regional airport.

In 1992, the voters of all seven governmental entities voted overwhelmingly in favor of continuing their representation in the airport project. Over the next several years, a series of studies concluded that a new airport was economically feasible and environmentally compatible.

In 1994, a federal grant was awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration to purchase the land, ground was broken and construction began in August 1995. Three years and three months later, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport opened for commercial air service with one airline, American Eagle, and two destinations — Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Today, American continues to have the largest market share of the six airlines operating at the airport with almost 50%. The airlines now offer nonstop flights to more than 20 cities across the country.

Northwest Regional opened for business Nov. 1, 1998. Six days later, President Bill Clinton dedicated the new airport with an estimated crowd of 8,000 looking on.

“Today, in a sentence, at long last, Northwest Arkansas can fly,” Clinton said. “To me, this symbolizes America at its best. People working on a common goal, across party lines, putting people first, thinking about the future.”

Getting the airlines to move from Fayetteville’s Drake Field to the new airport wasn’t easy, but within nine months, the rest had migrated, Johnson said.

“I don’t want to throw stones at Drake Field, but the capacity just wasn’t going to happen. There was no good way to make that airport what the region needed,” Johnson said. “Growth-wise, it was landlocked, there were issues with the terrain. That and the fact it was at the very south end of the service area for the cities. It was past time for it to happen, and there was pentup demand for it to happen.”

Initially, the authority projected about 200,000 passengers for 1999, but the quicker-than-expected relocation of service to the new airport and the success of the regional jet service resulted in 330,000 passengers that year. Within the first year of operations, it became necessary to expand the long-term parking lot and the aircraft parking apron.

“We grew much faster, much quicker than even we ever anticipated. We had projections that showed us maybe getting to a million enplanements in year 40 or something, but nothing like this,” Van Laningham said. “One of the things is you do that, you estimate on the low side and hope on the high side and you’re better off.”

Airport officials are expecting to just miss hitting 1 million passengers this year.

“I don’t think we ever envisioned that, none of the projections were that robust. We knew what our break-even points were, and we knew where we had to be. We felt comfortable with all of that,” Lindsey said.

“We designed and planned the airport very meticulously around the crystal ball projections for five, 10, 15 and 20 years. We were always conservative about it. It’s always a lot easier to add on than it is to pay for what you can’t use.”

Frances Mayo, with Around the World Travel in Springdale, remembered the days when Drake Field was the region’s primary airport.

“I’ve been a travel agent for 33 years, so I well remember Drake Field and the days of only having small planes and limited routes,” she said. “Back then, I would say 40% of travelers would drive to Tulsa for better connections and cheaper fares. Today, with the larger planes and schedules offered at XNA, that number would be less than 5%.”

The strength of the airport has been its regional board with regional ideas and people willing to assume some degree of risk to improve the region, Lindsey said.

“With Scott and Kelly running the show for 20 years, it obviously did very well and the current crew, they’re going to be fine. They’re going to do a good job, and the region’s going to continue to grow,” Lindsey said. “The population’s going to be a million by 2040, the projections say, and XNA will double in size, so we’ll have 2 million or so enplanements a year. That’ll put it right up there with some of the big boys.”

Aaron Burkes, current CEO at the airport, said Northwest Arkansas is fortunate to have had visionary leaders who saw the need for and had the tenacity to deliver a world-class commercial service airport to the region.

“I think it is safe to say that our region would not have grown as fast as it has without the airport. The airport’s and the region’s success are inextricably intertwined,” Burkes said. “XNA’s presence has enabled our regional economy to prosper and diversify by connecting local businesses with their customers around the world, supporting tourism and making it easier to attract and retain a talented workforce to such a desirable place to live.”

Going forward, there will be big challenges related to growth, Burkes said.

“As population grows around us, it becomes ever more essential that we ensure compatible land use around the airport,” Burkes said. “Housing subdivisions are not compatible with the unavoidable noise of an airport. And as our passenger volume grows, we will have to find ways to fund the necessary investments in our facilities to accommodate that growth.”

Longtime airport board member Art Morris, who represents Siloam Springs, said getting a road directly to the airport will be a game-changer for western Benton County.

“What I’m looking forward to is when we get the airport road finished and 612 finished, it’s going to open up the west side of that airport for industry,” Morris said. “We will just explode when that road is open.”

A $39 million terminal renovation project is in progress at the airport and a number of other projects are in the works, ranging from a new parking garage to an on-site hotel.

“Concourse B will probably be our next major effort after we get the terminal building finished,” Morris said. “We thought the parking deck would take 10 years before we filled it up. Now, a lot of days we’re at 100%, so we’ll look at building another parking deck on the east end.”

Airlines are now using bigger planes and more space will be needed for those, Morris said.

“The airlines are changing up, they’re using fewer flights and larger planes and that’s a challenge for us at the airport,” he said. “We built it for certain-sized planes. Now, we’re out of gates if we get new airlines. I don’t know that we ever realized how many planes that we would have spending an overnight here. It’s hard to find a place out there to park them at night and get them out of the way.”