Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
STATE’S AIRPORTS see traffic fall 50%.
Year-to-year declines top 50% in March, worsen in April
The state’s two largest airports saw declines in passenger traffic exceeding 50% in March as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.
Passenger traffic has plunged even more precipitously in April, but the March monthly reports from Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas National Airport at Highfill document the decline in passenger traffic when the pandemic began to take hold in the United
States.
At Clinton National, the state’s largest airport, departing and arriving passengers last month totaled 86,229, a 53% drop from the 182,239 tallied in March 2019.
Northwest Arkansas National showed a similar fall in passengers. It saw 70,552 passengers in March, a 51% drop from the 144,974 passengers who went through the airport a year ago this month.
The numbers at the two airports underscore the breadth of the decline. Clinton National’s passenger profile leans toward the leisure traveler while Northwest Arkansas National skews toward the business traveler.
The final April passenger numbers will reflect an even steeper fall. The number of passengers the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has been screening in April is down about 95% from what the agency screened a year ago.
On Sunday, the TSA screened 105,382 passengers nationwide, a figure that’s less than 5% of the 2,356,802
the agency screened on the same day in 2019.
Both airports are considering measures to assist major tenants, which saw revenue fall to levels that are a fraction of what they saw before the pandemic.
The Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission will take up a proposal to suspend some contractual requirements for their tenants, including the requirement to pay a minimum annual guarantee, which is paid in monthly installments.
Host, the food and beverage concessionaire at Clinton National, is required to pay a minimum annual guarantee of $570,000, which works out to $47,500 monthly. Under the
proposal, Host would likely pay less than 10% of that figure, or about $3,600 a month, based on the company’s current daily revenue at the airport of less than $1,000.
Northwest Arkansas National tenants also likely will see some relief, according to Alex English, the spokeswoman for the airport.
“We are currently in negotiations with our tenants … for abatements and deferrals in their current contracts,” she said in an email. “No final decisions have been made yet.”
The drop in passenger traffic also is being felt in the airport’s bottom line. Bryan
Malinowski, the top executive at Clinton National, estimated the airport had lost revenue totaling $450,000 last month. Its revenue for April is on track for a $1 million shortfall.
The shortfalls in March aren’t fully reflected in the Clinton National financial report for the month, mainly because significant categories of revenue, such as landing fees, are reported a month behind.
Parking, the airport’s main source of non-aviation revenue, fell 50% to $438,438 last month compared with the $896,156 it collected in March 2019.
Because fewer people are flying, both airports also are bleeding flights.
Rachel Bader, the air service development manager at Clinton National, said the airport is seeing no more than two dozen departures daily,
down from the 41 daily departures scheduled on Feb. 28.
United Airlines is scheduling four departures daily, down from the dozen it once had, according to a report that Bader submitted in advance of today’s Airport Commission meeting. Delta Airlines has fallen to two departures daily, down from eight.
Northwest Arkansas has lost direct service to San Francisco and Newark by United, to New York by Delta, and to New York and Los Angeles on American, according to English.
Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air have not had flights for about three weeks, she said. Frontier has service to Denver, while Allegiant operated flights to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and two other destinations.