Airport officials told to continue work on projects

Consultants: Prepare for rebound in air travel after pandemic ends

HIGHFILL — Northwest Arkansas National Airport officials were told Wednesday to keep their improvement projects moving so they’re prepared because passenger traffic will return to normal levels and actually increase in the long-term.

The new passenger projections reflect the impact of the covid-19 pandemic but also aviation industry trends since 1950.

Ryk Dunkelberg and Ryan Hayes with Mead & Hunt, the airport’s consultants since before it was built, told the Operations Committee of the airport’s board while air traffic numbers have been “down the toilet” recently, the industry as a whole has grown steadily over the last 70 years, overcoming a series of downturns related to various recessions, depressions, crises and disasters.

Dunkelberg said he expects long-term growth trend to resume, particularly if an effective vaccine or treatment for the covid-19 virus is found.

“What we want you to realize as board members is while the short-term picture is very murky, from a longterm perspective, the aviation industry is incredibly

resilient,” Hayes said. “From a long-term perspective, XNA is going to recover, the passengers are going to be back and you’re going to need the space to accommodate all that passenger demand.”

Dunkelberg recommended keeping expansion and improvement projects at the airport — including terminal renovations, a new concourse and new parking decks — moving through the design process so that they are ready to build when traffic numbers start to improve.

Traffic at Northwest National was off by 95% in April compared to April 2019 but has slowly increased each month. Traffic in July was down 71.7% from July last year.

Hayes said recovery for Northwest National is defined as returning to 2019 levels, which were just over 900,000 annual passenger enplanements. Hayes projected that will happen sometime between 2021 and 2024.

“We hope we’re wrong,” Dunkelberg said. “We hope these projections are off because we hope we recover faster.”

Board members were presented with three scenarios making various assumptions about the pandemic, including a potential second wave, getting a vaccine and developing treatments.

“Again, the message here is that short-term, in the next two to three years, it’s incredibly murky and it’s anyone’s best guess what’s going to happen,” Hayes said.

“From a long-term perspective, we’re still forecasting enplanements to double at this airport. By the 2040s — 20 years from now — we’re projecting about 1.8 million enplanements. So, twice as many enplanements at XNA as you served in calendar year 2019,” Hayes said.

Northwest National has always been considered a business travel airport, with more than 60% of the traffic being business related, but that has dried up during the pandemic.

Hayes said that has been due in large part to corporate travel policies that are depressing demand. Mead & Hunt, for example, has a policy that employees who get on a plane can’t come back to the office for two weeks and other companies have similar policies, he said.

Dunkelberg said businesses are starting to see burnout from teleconferencing and people want to get back to meeting in person.

“I think it’ll rebound a little quicker than we thought two or three months ago,” he said.

Board member Mike Johnson said he expects a hybrid of travel and online meetings to be the future norm because companies have figured out they can work effectively online.

“The demand is going to be for face-to-face but, if corporate denies paying for it, I think we have to wait and see,” said Sara Lilygren, committee chairwoman.

Aaron Burkes, airport chief operating officer, said Walmart might be the bell cow for other businesses.

“Our theory is that as soon as Walmart allows people to come back into the home office for meetings, any vendor to Walmart, if they can increase their chances of selling to Walmart by 1 percent, they’re going to fly here and meet a person,” Burkes said. “Again, it’s just a theory, but we think the vendors will try to fly in and, of course, that’s a lot of our business.”

Burkes said he also understands it’s a lot more economical to go online rather than fly across the country for a one-hour meeting.