Dayton airport toils but still has potential
It has 10th-highest fares in U.S., saw 24% drop in passengers in a decade.
Dayton International Airport has struggled in recent years with fewer flights and increased airfare prices, but local aviation and economic development leaders say it has a proven track record that will keep it relevant.
The number of passengers flying out of the Dayton airport has decreased 24 percent in the past decade and the average airfare has increased by nearly $100, an examination of federal data by this newspaper shows.
“Over the years Dayton has been higher in fares some years and lower in fares other years,” said Ohio Republican Senator Bill Beagle, who represents parts of Darke, Miami, Montgomery and Preble counties and chairs the Ohio Aerospace and Aviation Tech- nology Committee. “Though we may not be lowest at the moment, we can turn that around.”
Dayton, like other small- and medium-hub airports across the country, have seen their heydays pass as air carriers merged from 18 major airlines in 1978 to four today.
As larger airlines bought smaller ones, their hubs merged as well, almost always favoring the larger airports.
As a result, the Dayton airport average ticket fare is the 10th-highest among the largest 100 airports in the nation as low-cost service moves to larger markets that are more profitable. And rising prices have in turn caused fewer travelers to choose flights originating in Dayton from more than 1.47 million 10 years ago to 950,000 in 2017.
But it’s harder now than it has been in other years to come back from the strug- gles smaller airports have faced, said local aviation expert Jay Ratliff. Every air- port in the country is look- ing to current providers for more capacity and reaching out to other airlines to test even just one flight a day.
Dayton specifically is focused on increasing capac- ity from airlines currently operating at its own airport, said aviation director Terry Slaybaugh. After six years of talks to get a nonstop flight to Houston, United Airlines added one earlier this year. Slaybaugh said he hopes to add more non-stop desti- nations and increase cargo operations at the airport to help jumpstart further growth.
Boston and Las Vegas has been suggested as potential locations stemming from Dayton.
“We know what the issues are,” he said. “We don’t con- trol the solution; all we can do is try to influence it.”
Retiring of aircraft and replacing them with air- planes with fewer seats is just one of the reasons Dayton’s capacity has decreased in recent years. Southwest Airlines pulled service last summer to move to a more profitable market in Cincinnati and rising fuel costs are keeping airlines from testing new markets.
“Aviation, if anything, is fluid,” Ratliff said. “You really never know what’s going to happen. You don’t know if fuel prices are going to plum- met again, if they’re going to go up again. You don’t know if the economy is going to go well or the economy is going to pull back and it’s all of those factors that kind of help determine what airport directors and the mar- keting team are able to do to get airlines to consider.”
It will take an economy where travelers are hitting the skies, lower fuel costs that encourage airlines to expand and luck for everything to fall in place at one time to really turn Dayton around, Ratliff said, but it can happen and has at other airports.
Cincinnati used to be the place low-cost carriers went to die, Ratliff said. But when Frontier started offering one flight a day and saw success, other airlines joined the now fastest growing airport in the country.
That could happen for other struggling airports across thecountry, he added.
A thriving airport could mean more jobs and investment as companies look for locations with convenient and economical flights for employees.
“For companies looking to locate or grow in Ohio, access to airports and routes to the places they travel to a lot are important,” Beagle said. “Companies don’t want to routinely subject their staff to lengthy flights with multiple connections to visit customers or operations that they have to go to frequently.”