XNA numbers remain low but encouraging

HIGHFILL — The Northwest Arkansas National Airport saw the usual slight seasonal dip in overall passengers in August compared to July, but the numbers are still improving thanks to a trickle of business travelers returning.

“The actual enplanement numbers dropped from July to August, but the percentage change from last year for the corresponding months continued to improve,” said Aaron Burkes, airport executive director.

Burkes said in August 2019, the airport had a huge drop in total passengers, but it was still a very strong growth month because of the seasonality of air travel, which means fewer vacationers. The pattern is pretty predictable from year to year, he said.

The number of passengers has been steadily improving at Northwest National since bottoming out in April amid the spreading covid-19 pandemic. August this year saw 25,068 people fly out of XNA, which was down slightly from 25,739 the previous month.

August was down 68.5%, compared to the 79,582 who flew out of the airport in August 2019. The July to July percentage was down 71.7%.

Year-to-date, traffic was off 59.1% at Northwest National through August, compared to 2019. Monthly percentage comparisons to last year have improved each month since April.

Nationally, raw August data for the number of people passing through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints showed traffic was off 71.4% compared to the same month last year. Those numbers include flight crews in addition to passengers.

Burkes said September seems to be going better than expected. Through Sept. 22, XNA had 19,642 people pass through the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint, down 66.7% from the same period last year.